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They strip to the waist as soon as the chopper takes flight, flicking bits of this-and-that that're clinging to material and forearms across the dirt. Victor's face is a half-mask of red.
People scatter quietly, and Logan ignores them. Berkowitz follows them as far as the tin shed barracks, but leaves them as they make their way to the “showers”.
“Showers” are from a bucket at this camp: the water an ugly pale yellow and kept well away from their drinking water.
"Victor, y'got—" Logan swipes at his own lower lip with his no longer white vest wrapped wet around his knuckles for a cleaning cloth. Victor copies him obligingly, and looks considering at the mess smeared across the back of his hand, then licks his teeth.
"M'good now?" He grins at Logan, nose scrunched, and turns his head left and right a little, presenting himself for inspection like he might have a bit of green caught between his teeth, like if either of them bothered to shave any more. No spinach, no sinew, no blood. His teeth are sharp and clean.
The spot right under the jut of his lower lip is still red.
"You're good, 'cept," Logan reaches out with the back of his hand, fingers curled in a loose fist. He moves slowly, but he still feels Victor's breath quicken hot and heavy over his knuckles. Could have used the pads of his fingers, but the dangerous jut of his knuckles gets the reaction he's after out of Victor a lot quicker.
He grabs Logan's wrist before Logan can pull his hand back and wipe the smear of red onto his stained fatigues. Logan tugs at his grip and rocks forward as Victor tugs back harder, teeth bared again but a different kind of smile this time.
He presses his tongue between Logan's knuckles, sandpaper rough, and licks until there's nothing left but spit, then licks across his clean skin one more time.
Logan's claws slide out just far enough to touch the tip of Victor's tongue along and then they're both on the ground.
Logan snarls as Victor hooks his legs out from under him, and his other arm goes around Victor's neck, claws snapping out and fingers digging already healing bruises into his skin again and again as they tumble thought the boot tramples mud around the water tanks.
They're hidden from most of the camp, unless someone else comes around to wash.
Logan disentangles them and gets to his feet, wincing at the tear when Victor doesn't let him go immediately.
“Not here,” he says and breathes through his nose. Breathes long and hard and focuses on where they are and why it's a bad idea to encourage Victor. Without the scent of blood in his nose and with Victor a few feet away, it's easier. The fight looks uglier the further he gets from it.
The look Victor gives him is one he's seen turn other men on their heels.
Logan leans his back and one boot sole against a tree, trying to keep as still as possible.
Berkowitz is leaning against the tin of the barracks in the thing slice of shade the roof provides. He salutes Logan with his KA-BAR and Logan nods back.
The damn heat is oppressive even in the heavy shade in this leafy corner of the camp. All the vegetation has been cleared but for this one tree, bumping up behind their temporary barracks. Logan has staked it for his own whenever they're in camp.
He watches the fresh meat arrive.
Logan's watched this particular dance before. Their new boys always gravitate towards Victor first, his relaxed shoulders and his smile. They see him leaning back here in the shade with his helmet low over his eyes, they see Berkowitz across from him with his two-tone fright-white and black hair, picking his fingernails with a KA-BAR, blank faced and more intent on the task than he should be. They see Victor, lounging like a housecat in the sunlight by the barracks door, grinning and open.
They head inevitably towards him.
This time it's a tall dark-skinned boy that gets pointed their direction, long limbed and skinny, gear hanging off him looks like it weighs more than he does. He stops in front of Victor and throws out a greeting, and Victor's smile widens in response.
The boy's eyes go to Victor's fingers, laced over his stomach and Logan's too far away to see but he knows by the new kid's abruptly stiff posture Victor's claws are very deliberately full-length and on display.
He knows Victor finds the way the boy's apprehension sharpens to fear in the air amusing. Logan can't say he's much above it, catches the scent on the breeze with the thicker scent of Victor right underneath and his lips quirk up at the corners.
Across from him, Berkowitz looks away shaking his head.
The kid waves awkwardly and makes a beeline inside the building.
It's not going to hurt the new kid to realise you've got to think hard and think twice out here. It's not bootcamp. There are no more tests.
It's the dying months of 1967. Logan doesn't always keep up with the numbers, but he knows because he reads the painted helmet of their new kid: '666'67'. Lots of them write clever captions on their camo.
Words don't stop bullets.
No point in telling them that though, most of the kids he sees come through here are so green they blend into the fucking jungle.
Six-six-six is damned as the last kid and the last kid before that, and Logan wouldn't be too surprised if he had only just discovered what his dick was for last year. Would be immensely surprised if he'd ever had a woman.
NLF gooks hide out in the greenery quiet and quick as real animals while their boys wipe their asses on poisonous leaves and leave the reek of themselves and the echo of their too-loud footsteps everywhere.
Logan killed the enemy when he had to but there was a rueful sort of satisfaction in watching them pick off whatever squad they'd been landed with this time.
The record for longevity in any squad he and Victor have been in has been set by Berkowitz, but it takes a freak to know a freak and if nothing else Berkowitz's silence and his haircut set him apart from the others. Quiet is how he does everything, and Logan can't say he's disagreeable: keeps up, shuts up, hasn't reported Victor for anything. Logan doesn't mind him when he remembers he's there. A regular joy to work with, really.
Joy. Logan snorts derisively.
Joy wasn't something that lived easily here. Like fire, it needed something more than tinder and flint to burn in this mess. The oppressive wet heat that snuffed out the desire to do or feel anything that wasn't violence or sleep snuffed out the comfort of campfires.
The only things that burned here needed serious fuel to ignite them. The things that burned bright here were deadly.
Napalm and Victor.
Victor takes point. Berkowitz follows silently, the grey streak that covers the left side of his head bright in the darkness of the undergrowth. Never puts on his helmet, but it's not Logan's problem if he wants to make a target of himself.
"Don't talk much, do you?" the new kid pipes up, walking quicker to catch up to him.
"No."
New kid consults a compass and clears his throat.
"Shut it, kid," Logan says, cutting off what he knows he's about to ask.
The kid noticed quicker than Logan had expected, though: the second they were out of sight of the chopper, they started heading north-east instead of dead north like they'd been told to.
Telling him to cram the commentary is a kindness. They're not friends. It's not likely they're going to get enough time for Logan to muster much of a shit to give. There's also no need for the kid to tax himself: they know where they're going.
They spend a few minutes of quiet trudging along the damp bare soil of an old elephant track. Smells more like pigs and people, though. He watches Victor scent the air, a spare jerk of his head. Victor's always had the better nose.
And he'd been trying to avoid exactly what's happening right now: the kid trots ahead, long unfilled out limbs swinging, and slows his stride by Victor's side.
He'll learn he should listen to Logan if it kills him.
They hit the makeshift camp without warning. No reason they should be expecting them, they've crept up two miles north of where their intelligence had told them they needed to be.
The bulk of bodies go to Victor and himself. Berkowitz fires his rifle only once, and only at close range. He's seen them fight enough, and he hunkers down out of the way and picks off only the ones that get too close to his position. Keeps the hell out of their way.
The only bullet the kid fires ends up embedded just left of Logan's spine and he grits his teeth around the scream, spitting it out as a harsh snarl as his body spits the bullet out the closing wound.
Victor hear and turns to him with an equally pained snarl but Logan stops him with a fist wrapped in the collar of his uniform shirt and dogtags, jerking him short of his lunge towards the kid.
"Victor!" he yells. Victor twists his in grip and Logan uses the momentum to practically throw him towards the last remaining Vietnamese, an old man, well past his prime.
Victor lets himself be thrown and lands crouched and animal, boots and claws, on the old man. He crumples underneath Victor's weight like wet vegetation under a machete. Victor's claws digging deep into his neck and his guts, fists clenching.
His scream is silent.
Victor spits out blood, what could be shards of wood or bone. Grins at Logan with pink tinted teeth. Logan shakes his head. The kid hadn't meant it, wouldn't have deserved that any more than the man who got it did.
He's surprised Victor had even given him the chance to redirect his ire. Didn't seem to need an excuse these days. Hadn't for a long time. Lots of years between them, and Logan's feels the build up of time them like a wedge splitting him in half.
Logan recoils from the thoughts with a cowardice he was sure he'd shed with the last of his sickbed fever, somewhere deep in the woods and shivering under his brother's warm arms.
"Let's move," Logan says, and turns his back on Victor's bloody whiskers and red wet hands. Swipes at his own.
The kid looks at him with wide, grateful eyes and Logan turns away again. Kid's got it backwards if he thinks Logan's done him much of a favour here. He's got it backwards if he thinks he'd turned Victor away from him purely to keep him alive. They can't afford the trouble.
He sets out on point without another word. They follow, he hears Victor follow first. Berkowitz and the kid move a moment after.
They keep moving until nightfall.
"No fire?" the kid asks, words tumbling out quick and quiet. He's scared.
Logan chalks one point in favour of his intelligence for the fear, one point the other way for the question.
"Too wet," Victor supplies and toes over a piece of rotting wood with his boot. Logan sees a few multi-legged things skitter away in the faint moonlight. Victor curls his lip and punts the offending piece of tree into the darkness.
"Whole place is too fucking wet," Logan bitches.
Victor raises an eyebrow at him, and Logan raises his back. Victor's the one that dragged their asses out here, this time and when they'd signed on the dotted line again, Victor can take a little bitching and shut up about it.
The patch of ground they've chosen doesn't deserve the name clearing. They spend a few minutes kicking the leaf litter and things with too many eyes and legs away to find bare, black dirt. Berkowitz silently pitches in and uses his short machete to hack away most of the weedy plants. Logan doesn't give in to tired impatience and use his own blades to clear the rest quickly, and after a few minutes they have a place to lay their heads that's relatively less infested with bugs and fuck knows what else than the dripping jungle around them.
Logan picks the most likely patch of soft damp earth and stakes it out as his own, throwing his pack down, rifle still strapped tight against it.
Victor takes up a position opposite him. Their boots collide in the middle and Logan's walked long enough today he can't be bothered untangling them.
"What's the matter kid, you cold?" Victor asks.
It's pitch black but still hot as a spring day, the mockery in Victor's voice is subtle as a fist.
A moth batters against the side of Logan's face and he swipes at it blindly, it flies drunkenly across the clearing and Victor pins it flapping between his claws. He examines its death throws a second before shaking it off and turning back to bigger game.
Logan follows his gaze to the kid. He's standing with one arm around his chest and staring out into the blackness around them. His jaw chatters. It's an adrenaline come down, something like shock.
"No," the kid says. "I'm cool. Shit, I mean I'm fine," his laugh is quiet and cuts off abruptly with the click of his teeth.
"Siddown, kid," Logan says, taking pity on him.
"Yeah, you sit down by me here, I'll make sure you're warm," Victor's teeth show and his eyes crinkle with amusement.
Berkowitz turns away from them, and offers his usual fuck all to the conversation.
The kid finally looks away from the black, and straight down at Victor. Victor pats the dirt by his thigh. The kid sits down and takes a shaky breath, he's cross-legged in the dirt like a kindergartner sitting at attention for their teacher.
"I'm fine," he offers, and he looks up with a grin. His jaw shakes with less frequency. "It's just. Just different. You know? Than they tell you. It'll be. I'm cool though, I can be cool."
"Hmmm," Victor hums low. "Don't look fine, kid," Victor says, full of mocking sincerity. Logan can smell it coming off the kid, too, the flop-sweat scent of fear. "Look like you're about to piss your pants if something goes bump in the night out there. Don't worry too much. We're the things that go bump 'round here."
The kid's smile stays intact on his face and Logan does the sensible frowning for both of them. Something tickles across the hairs on the back of his arm and he grimaces at the centipede gliding across his skin on an undulating wave of legs. He flicks it out into the darkness.
Watching Victor and the kid is like watching a cat play with a mouse, except what mice lack in brains they make up for in instinct. They sure as hell fear the cat.
Kid can't tell the cats from the mice, is the problem.
Victor pets the kid's bony knee in a way that might be comforting, claws only barely catching at his uniform.
Something burns in Logan's guts, hot and poisonous. Victor meets his eye and Logan shakes his head. The kid smile has dimmed and frozen, obliviously directed past Victor and out into the dark again.
Berkowitz starts picking at the stubs of his nails.
"Well, I volunteer for first watch," Victor says after a minute. "Who's coming?"
The kid watches Victor's fingers slide, too slow, off his kneecap. Logan doesn't loose the growl in his throat, but when the kid opens his mouth he talks right over him. The kid shakes himself and twitches his hand, ready to raise it.
“Stow it, kid,” Logan snaps.
"He's out here, he's old enough to make his own decisions," Victor says and the glint in his eye is bright as blood.
He can smell what Victor's thinking.
"I'm comin'," Logan manages through gritted teeth and hauls himself out of the dirt.
The kid snaps his mouth shut and looks torn between terror and relief at being left out.
That marks the second time today Logan's made an effort to keep his hide intact. Logan is going to be pissed off if he does something fucking stupid like walking into a tripwire any time soon. He'll kill the kid again himself.
"Can always go back and play with the new kid. Seems kind of lonely with only Berkowitz the retarded mute for company, since I'm not allowed to make nice."
Logan doesn't reply, and Victor stops in front of him. There's a barely there space here much like the one they'd settled further back. Victor turns to face him, features soft in the darkness.
"It'll be finished soon enough. It never takes more than a few years.”
“It's not that,” Logan says, but that is part of it. He's finished with this war. It's sooner than he's ever felt done before.
“Apart from some dry fucking ground and a good steak, we're not exactly missing much, Jimmy," Victor takes a step towards him. He reaches out a hand and it's almost like watching the shadows shift and come alive. He doesn't touch.
Logan slaps it out of the air, a quick jab of his right like they're sparring sans the sharp edges. He wants Victor to stop. Talk is useless. Talk can't fix this.
Victor takes it exactly how Logan knew he would and he swings at Logan wide, fingers curled, but the opening is huge even in the dark.
Logan's claws are lodged in the meat of Victor's shoulder before he can feel the anger fade.
Victor grins up at him.
"There you are," he says low and happy, and Logan feels the words shudder up his arm, into his bones.
"Fuck you."
"If you want, little brother."
He really fucking wants. Victor smells better than fucking — smells like fucking, and Victor. Blood and sweat and pack. Logan feels his chest rumble with a low growl.
Victor leans in and drags his rough tongue through the dirt and sweat clinging to his hairline. His teeth graze Logan's ear before he pulls down and licks Logan's bared teeth. Logan lets him in, and gets his lip bitten bloody for his trouble. Victor's hands grasp the sides of his face, claws pricking pin point holes under his hairline, his grip unyielding until he's cleaned every drop from the healed wound in Logan's lip.
Victor knows as well as he does Logan's letting the kid stay at their camp was only half altruism. Not as if he can't smell it all over him.
He pulls his claws free and Victor jerks under him, pressing them together, thigh to cock. Logan screws his eyes shut and pushes his hips down and Victor rolls him before he can pin him again. His hand is immediately on Logan's cock, stroking through his pants. Logan grabs his wrist.
"Watch the fucking buttons, I haven't got spares," he gets out as Victor grinds against him. His cock hot and hard against his thigh, hand squeezing.
Victor's other hand lands on his cheek and Logan growls and grasps that wrist too. Victor's claws prick his cheek through his whiskers.
"Gonna let me or not?"
Logan lifts his head and inhales a thick, heady lungful of Victor, sweat and sex saturating the air. He growls and wrenches Victor's wrist back at an angle that makes Victor show his teeth and let go of Logan cock to reach for his throat.
Logan flips him halfway through the movement and lands on top again, flicks the buttons on his pants loose and pulls himself free.
Victor looks up at him from his back, his gaze burning. Logan shoves a hand under his shirt and tugs the thick hair that leads underneath the waistband of his trousers.
Victor reaches out and tugs him forward, shoves both hands down the back of Logan's loosened waistband and grips his ass, squeezes. His claws dig into the meat of Logan's thighs, and he just tugs him forward harder as Logan jerks away from the pricking pain and grinds his cock against Victor's stomach, then pushes back into Victor's hands.
He leans forward and bites the curve of Victor's neck where he smells best, pulse pounding and blood close to the skin.
Victor bucks up hard against him and the colourless shadows of the jungle spin around him again as Victor flips them and grind them into the dirt.
Logan balls one hand in Victor's shirt and shoves the other between them to flick Victor's fly open. Victor's arms flex either side of his head as he gives him room, and he can hear the crackle of leaves being crushed as Victor dips his fingers into the leaf litter as well as he can hear their harsh panting breaths.
When they're skin-on-skin Victor drops his full weight on Logan, heavy and hot. He grasps both Logan's wrists and drags them into the dirt above his head, and Logan's head falls to the side before he can stop himself.
Victor's laugh is deep in his chest as a purr. He leans in and clamps his teeth either side of Logan's Adam's apple for a long second, squeezes just fractionally. Logan shudders and shoves their cocks together between them, slipping slick across soft skin and rough hair.
Victor speaks into Logan's throat: "Turn over."
"Y'wanna let go of my hands first or you want me to dislocate some things?"
Victor bites him, hard, and Logan jerks away. Even expecting the sting and tear of skin and Victor's teeth cut into him and snap together on blood and nothing he still can't help the snarl that spills from him. They're far enough from Berkowitz and the kid they shouldn't hear it, but fuck them if they're suicidal enough to follow that kind of music out into the dark.
He flips over to his stomach with Victor's insistent hands shoving at him, and his own blood flows across his chin before the tide stems and his skin knits itself together.
Victor's mouth is hot across the back of his neck. His knees shove Logan's apart and Logan almost has the urge to bare his throat again, turn his head to the side.
"You're lucky you're always worth workin' for, Jimmy," Victor pants.
"Fuck me," Logan growls and shoves his half covered ass back against Victor. Victor pulls the material away with a wretch that strains seams, and Logan can't care any more if anything tears. Victor grinds his cock against him for a second, slick head slipping against the crack of his ass before he pulls away and moves down.
One of Victor's hands reaches between his spread thighs and traces a tickling path across his skin, brushes his balls briefly. Logan lifts his hips expecting teeth or a hand on his cock, but Victor just presses his claws to the pulse point in his groin. Even they tend to bleed out if you cut fast and hard enough certain spots. Victor's claws cut in but just barely the cuts heal as quick as they're drawn, skin sliding shut behind the drag of them.
"I love that noise, little brother," Victor breath is cool against his sweat-damp skin.
Victor draws the same claw down the hard line of Logan's cock and Logan bites through his lip clamping the scream behind his teeth as he feels the skin burn and heal.
"You wanna. Get on with it," he grinds out.
Victor pulls his hands away and pushes a palm flat against Logan's back. Logan's stomach and cock hit the dirt and Victor's whiskers and breath hit the back of his neck.
"Sure," Victor says, and presses his fingers against Logan's lips. "Spit.”
Victor spits in his own hand before clicking himself with it. They both make a wounded animal sound that echoes into the darkness and silences the distant cries of some nocturnal bird.
The kid is feigning sleep when they return, but his shivers and unsteady breathing gives him away. Berkowitz has switched from picking his nails to biting them. He nods at Logan as they haul themselves back into the dank camp site, and doesn't spare Victor a glance.
Logan is woken up by the scream of jets overhead and is on his feet even as Victor's yelling his name.
It's a few long, silent seconds after the planes are gone before the world explodes somewhere to his left and everything starts burning. Couldn't just blow things to shit the regular way, had to stick sticky-fire into bombs now.
They run, but Berkowitz disappears ahead of him and as Logan turns on his heel to confirm he's skewered in the Vietcong pit trap Berkowitz just waves up at him go, go, before curling down on himself on the pockmarked dirt floor, shoving his shirt up over his face.
It's too late, then. He hears Victor yell, too far away.
Logan gets ten feet before he's cut off on every side, and sees Victor fall, snarling and burning. Logan screws his eyes shut for a second. He can't breathe, the air's being eaten as quick as the vegetation.
Might as well get it over with.
He can't help the tear of his claws down his arm and out, as if he can do some damage to the fire as he presses forward. He collapses a bare few inches from Victor.
He can't scream.
Heat licks into his mouth like a lover, scorching his tongue.
Nothing to do but choke until it burns itself out. Logan feels his lungs disappear: it's a peculiar kind of feeling when the lack of air doesn't quite kill him before the fire starts. Even as he feels himself struggling to breath he knows there's no point: his hair burns, but he can't draw air to smell it, and he feels as if he's expanding in the heat, skin thick and strangely numb.
Black.
He wakes up when his lungs regenerate enough for oxygen to start reaching his brain, and wishes the healing could keep him the hell asleep until he was finished growing everything back. His eyes are open. It takes him a long minute to get his head together enough to realise why he can't blink the dry sting away, staring at the grey and red blur of the world as his eyelids regenerate slowly.
Victor is watching him, crouched next to him in the soot and dirt, his cheeks pink and fresh. New. His uniform is patchy and blackened.
The whole world is patchy and blackened, the wet green jungle is black, brown, white ash and dry, cinders and death.
"How many times do you think this makes it we've been offed by 'friendly fire'?" he asks with a grin. "You looked like a side of roast. Almost fucking appetising after the shit they feed us," Victor's grin gets wide and wolfish enough to include his fangs.
Logan wheezes a laugh.
"I'm not gonna tell you to 'bite me' again in a hurry," he manages to scrape out horsely. He spits a bit of phlegmy flesh that tastes faintly of chicken into the dirt. His throat feels as if it's stuffed full of feathers as it finishes healing, scratching and tickling.
"Pity," Victor says. He runs the pad of his index finger down Logan's smooth cheek, the tip of his claw training it softly. Logan grabs his wrist and Victor smiles that smile that only Logan gets from him. He feels like it's been a long time since he's seen it.
Victor pulls his hand away and Logan lets him. He licks his fingertip. Logan can't help but breathe in the scent of charred flesh deep, underneath it it's all Victor's sweat and arousal.
Logan shakes his head.
"Roast meat turns you on now?"
"Just you, Jimmy," Victor says and Logan snaps his mouth shut on another joke.
Victor gets to his feet, and offers Logan a hand.
They backtrack for Berkowitz, and find the pit only a few meters away. He's coughing, but he's alive. He grasps Logan's wrist strongly and Logan smiles as he hauls him out of the pit. He's impressed he's dodged death with them one more time. Fucker's almost as hard to kill as them and without the benefits of healing. The thick grey-white streak in his hair is nearly invisible, blending into the rest of his dark hair with dirt and ashes.
He offers Logan a rueful smile back, then bends double to cough again. It's bad, but he waves a hand as Logan steps closer, and when he stands he's breathing better.
They all turn at the sound of someone in pain. The kid. Logan kicks a dead — lizard? — out of his way, and the trample through hot coals and death back the way they'd run. The kid's curled in a ball of spidery limbs and dying badly. He's burnt, uniform and skin a melted swirl down his left side. His ribs are closer to the surface than before.
He takes a whimpering breath.
Berkowitz makes a sound, then, too.
Logan crouches by the kid's side and turns his head with a palm roughly covering his eyes. He holds him still and gets ready to pop a claw between his ribs and into his heart, same place you aim for to kill a deer with an arrow. It's quick. Not painless, Logan knows intimately, but less painful than how he's going now.
They're close to action and a long way from camp. No sense in dragging him for miles or for letting him suffer.
A rattling gasp freezes in his chest and his body jerks and tenses under Logan's hand, but he's gone before Logan's claws come out.
It was quick enough.
Victor laughs hoarsely and Logan tenses at his approach though it's deliberately loud (neither of them are fun to sneak up on, and if Victor wants stuck he's got other ways of asking for it). Claws scrape the back of his neck lightly, a threat or a petting. Logan shrugs him off and stands.
“Fresh meat never lasts long out here,” Victor says and turns to go.
"Hold up, Creed. Think there might be life in this one yet,” Berkowitz says. His voice is rough and it could be from the smoke or it could just be rusty from disuse. Logan tries to think back to the last time he spoke to them.
"Ain't carrying him," Victor says, but stops and waits, looking bored and more than ready to move. He taps his claw points against his thigh, picking at the charred khaki material.
"Won't have to," Berkowitz says and Victor raises an eyebrow. Logan echoes the expression, because sure as hell looks like he's down for the count. Pretty sure he saw the kid die with his own eyes. "You gotta do me a favour though."
"Ain't carrying you either," Victor says.
Bukowitz laughs dryly, and the hair on the back of Logan's neck stands up. He glances at Victor, who has his top lip curled in a little snarl, mirroring his unease. Logan is sure he's never heard him laugh.
"Definitely won't have to," he says. He kneels down by the kid's side and puts a hand over his chest. "Don't suppose either of you think we're gonna get any more gooks in the next couple minutes?"
“Everything's burned to shit,” Logan sniffs, and shrugs. Everything smells dead.
Berkowitz nods.
"What's the favour?"
"Need you to stick me."
"'M not entirely sure I heard that right?" Logan asks.
"Or you can shoot me, but I always fancied I'd get through this shit without a bullet catching me. Don't like the idea of it." His voice is still rough, and if Logan weren't looking at his impassive face he might mistake it for apprehension. He looks calm.
"You got a problem with bullets, soldier?" Victor snorts, then waves his hand dismissing the absurdity. "I think you should get to a point sometime soon, or we're going to go and you can stay here and tell stretch. He's all ears,” Victor tilts his head. The kid's left ear is a twisted mess of cauterised red flesh. “All ear,” he corrects.
"Most men got a preference on how they go,” Berkowitz shrugs, ignoring Victor's taunting.
"Most men's preference is 'not at all'," Logan says.
"Not a fucking clue what good that's going to do for the corpse there," Victor says, "but I could do you that favour if you if you really want. We'll get back quicker without you, anyway." Victor holds up his hands and lets his claws go, curling out long and sharp.
Berkowitz narrows his eyes and looks unimpressed. It's a long way from the look Victor normally gets for that display, but Berkowitz has seen it before.
He knows what Victor's thinking. Anger simmers close to the surface of his skin most of the time, but Logan can smell it on him now.
"Not you," Berkowitz says. He points at Logan. "Logan. In a minute it's not gonna matter in the slightest that you might want to rip my guts out, so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you I'd rather suck the maggots out of a week old corpse than have your fingers on me, Creed." He spits on the ground.
"Well my feelings are definitely hurt," Victor says with a mocking pout, and a hand pressed over his heart. "Jimmy, you want to grant his wish before I do? Because I'm feeling incredibly obliging right now."
Logan's feeling a little more obliging himself. Victor's still his brother.
"I'm feeling a little more inclined to help, myself. You're gonna tell me why, though, Berkowitz, or I'm with Victor on leaving you here with the kid."
"You kill me, he lives," Berkowitz says simply. He falls down to his knees in the blackened vegetation and ugly yellow grease at the kid's side.
"You're a mutant," Logan says, and raises an eyebrow again.
Berkowitz nods. "Not for much longer," he says and his lips twitch in a suicidal smile. His face is pale between the streaks of black ash, his jaw set. "He deserves the chance to maybe go home. I've had it. I don't want to go home. I can't stand the thought of it. I'm as good as dead. So I'll give him my chance. I can't heal him without someone else dying, it's got to be a fair exchange: I can't just fix things, I can only transfer the damage. Swap. Change."
"You sure it'll work like this?" Logan asks.
"No," Berkowitz laughs rustily. “Never brought a person back. Never found anyone I wanted to kill as much as I wanted someone else to live. Guess I have now.”
He looks up at Logan, the laugher slipping away from his face as easy as burnt skin from the fat and muscle underneath. Easy as half of the kid's ended up sluiced across the jungle floor, what little fat was once clinging to his bones congealing and dirty with fallen ash. Berkowitz's eyes are serious and dark and his knees are nudging the spill of the kids skin.
"I want to," he says and draws a finger across his own throat as if he's got any idea what that feels like.
Logan winces. Victor snorts a short, mean laugh. When Logan looks over at him, he's winding his finger in a lazy circle by his head. Crazy. Logan shakes his head at him.
"Thought about trying this a lot," Berkowitz says. He runs a hand over his two-tone hair and looks up at Logan from his knees.
There's a question in his eyes Logan reads easily enough. Logan's never wanted to die, but he nods his head as if he understands anyway. He knows he's done right when Berkowitz smiles again. He lets his claws cut their way out.
"You wanna stand up for this?" Logan asks.
Berkowitz shakes his head and plants a hand on the relatively unburnt skin in the middle of the kid's still chest.
"I have to be touching him,” he makes a little huh sound in the back of his throat. “Still so warm," Berkowitz says under his breath. "Do it."
The kid makes it back to base, and Logan decides he can't trek through the fucking jungle any more. What happens to the kid after that, he doesn't fucking want to know.
Victor gets them transferred to a chopper retrieval team, then thrown into a dank little dug-out in chains.
Logan wants desperately for it to be surprising.
It isn't.