What If? Episode 907

Getting Settled - Finally

As the weeks passed, Scott did pretty well learning how to cook the fish they caught every weekend, though it did take him a few tries to get it right. And- the regular meals and decidedly lower stress rate seemed to be doing the boy wonders. He was growing. Fast. He almost didn't notice it until he was standing next to Logan and realized that he'd passed him up.

He just smirked Logan's way until the now-shorter man just gave him a dry look. "Like it's hard to be taller'n me?" Scott couldn't help but smile at that though he tried to keep from picking too much. At least for now while they were still getting to know each other.

The last few weeks of summer had passed quickly, and Scott was a little bit anxious about starting up school. Heather still hadn't managed to secure the proper material for his glasses, and as luck would have it, his headaches were again becoming an issue, though the pressure points Logan had taught him helped tremendously.

The only thing that had Scott even partly relaxed was the fact that the school was on the way to where Logan was working, though all it really amounted to was an hour before school to spend in the library. The first week or two was tough. He didn't have the same manner of speaking as the rest of the kids in the school, and it was obvious to all of them that had grown up together in that small town that he simply wasn't one of them.

He did, however decide to at least try. If he couldn't work, then maybe he could get on one of the sports teams so that he didn't have as much time to kill waiting for a ride. He'd decided to go out for the Hockey team when tryouts came up, just for something to keep himself busy, and he had played when he was still with his parents.

Scott was sure he'd be fine with a little practice, so that's what he did - every day after school if he wasn't studying, though he did stop short of changing the usual weekend plans since he really enjoyed the quiet in the woods with Logan when they went fishing. Logan rarely started the conversation, perfectly content to just be there and keep him company while he 'contributed'.

By the time tryouts came around, Scott had been stressing himself terribly. He hadn't found his niche in the school yet, and his headaches had started to intensify. He was ready to just forget all of it - hang up his skates and call it like it was, but when he got to the cabin after practice, he was surprised to find a package on the table with his name on it.

He looked at the name on the return address and frowned. It was from Harry, and addressed to him, and without thinking about it, he just opened it up to find that finally, after all this time, Heather had managed to come through. He stared at the new glasses for a moment - they looked much better than the ones he'd gotten at the orphanage, but ... they were just so ... identifiable.

He picked them up with a deep frown and carried them to his room. For a moment, he did put them on - but one glance in the mirror had his jaw locked and he quickly took them off again and set them down on the dresser. "Not going to use them unless I have to," Scott said to himself before he nodded once and turned to get back to his homework.

The Hockey tryouts had finally arrived, and Scott was nervous and more than a little stressed over the whole affair. Waiting for his turn to try out, he was pressing his thumb between his eyebrows hard enough that although it was helping his eyes not hurt as much, that spot was starting to ache and he spent the last ten minutes or so before he took the ice pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

When his name was called, he got up and gave his best shot, flat out ignoring the pounding headache and the way his eyes were feeling. He just didn't have time for it when he was doing something that important.

He skated well, but he hadn't prepared for the dirty tricks the upperclassmen were using on the younger guys, and he ended up with the wind knocked out of him when he was body checked into the wall by two guys.

When tryouts were over, he left reasonably sure he'd missed the mark. He skated well and shot perfectly. He could work the puck as well as the big kids, but the dirty tricks ...

To his credit, he didn't quit or complain when they tripped him or slammed him. But he had the whole weekend to sit through before he would know who made the cut and with his head pounding worse than he could remember it doing before, Scott was just feeling down about all of it as he made his way to the cabin.

Logan's week had gone similarly bad. Their log cutting outfit had gotten a new guy a few weeks prior, and from the get go, he'd been a blowhard and a giant pain in the ass. At first, Logan blew it off as just a run of the mill macho idiot, but at the beginning of the week, the guy had let slip that he'd been in the fights a few months prior and had his thunder stolen by a weasely little cheat.

The guys that knew Logan well by this point just fell silent, unsure if their new friend was going to be riled by a sore loser or not, and Logan himself just shook it off. "Plenty of guys lost and got over it," the foreman had said. "You might want to consider that since - you don't know what the hell you're talking about."

But the guy had just slowly amped up his aggression level, apparently more and more irritated by working with the guy who'd won. He spent every chance he got insulting Logan in any way he could dream up, and though as a general rule, Logan ignored it ... it did have a way of wearin' on a guy.

The group was done with work for the day - the trucks loaded up, and everyone was heading back to their vehicles when this moron came up behind Logan and pushed him hard enough to get him to stumble. He turned toward him ready to ream him out and barely dodged the punch the guy had thrown at him.

The foreman was calling out that they couldn't fight, but the big guy was undeterred, so with the next punch he threw, Logan ducked under the guy's arm and swept his feet out from under him, dropping him flat on his back in the mud.

Logan just looked down at him with a scowl and his fists clenched before he turned and continued on his way, not interested in the least in continuing a fight with the guy. At least, not on company grounds. Or anywhere that he could be held responsible. Avoiding arrest was kind of a big priority.

So by the time he met up with Scott, who was sullen and hurting and down on himself - the two of them were quite the pair.

They both changed out of their 'work' clothes and into something more fitting of the fall weather before they packed a bag for the weekend and headed a little further north into the woods across the state line into the Ottawa National Forest for a weekend of camping without so much as a word spoken between them.

The colors in the trees were already fully changed, and Scott had to admit, even though his head was killing him, just looking at the warmly colored forest was relaxing. Logan took them as deeply into the forest as he could with the jeep, and the last ten miles or so were a wild ride through mud and water and over rocks. The little off roading experience had Scott smiling in spite of himself. There was just something fun about going through that stuff and watching it splatter on the windshield that even he couldn't deny on his worst days.

When they couldn't go further without risking major damage to the jeep, Logan found a solid place to leave it and the two of them gathered up their gear and headed into the woods, where Logan promised there was a good trout stream. How he ever found his way that deeply in the woods without leaving markers for the trail back, Scott simply didn't know, but one thing was certain.

For as deeply as Logan was leading him, he wanted as far away from people as Scott did.