Jean and Scott, Thursday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Jean's been overdoing things (and not sleeping). Scott calls her on it, but she's not particularly responsive. A little on the hysterical side, actually.


Jean threaded her fingers through her hair, pushing it back away from
her face again for what seemed the twentieth time in the last ten
minutes. She desperately wanted a hair tie, but was too busy with the
latest test results to go get one. Reaching for her coffee cup showed
it was empty. Christ above, empty. That she would move for, and taking
the cup with her she went in search of a pot of coffee. Preferably one
that was slightly old, so the coffee would have had a chance to sit
and stew.

Scott paused in the doorway. "Jean?" he asked very patiently. "Can we
talk for a minute?"

"Sure," Jean said, managing a smile. "Walk with me? Just going to get
a cuppa and then I need to get back to work."

"Do you have to?" Scott asked very directly. Direct was the only way,
he suspected, given how sleep deprived she almost certainly was. "Go
back to work, I mean."

Jean shot him a look, uncertain where he was going with this. "Yes,"
she said unequivocally, then turned to see if there was any coffee
left in the medlab office pot. Ooooh, half a cup of pot-bottom. That
would work for another couple of hours. Especially if Moira had brewed
it.

"I'm not trying to be the demanding boyfriend here," Scott said, very
deliberately using the b-word. "But you haven't been doing a whole lot
of sleeping lately, have you?"

"I sleep as much as I can, Scott," Jean said. Although there was a
certain lie to her words, given she followed them with coffee. Cold,
but it would do the job. She considered a smile, wondering if he would
believe it, but given he was just using the term 'boyfriend' to
manipulate her, she wasn't sure he deserved to be smiled at. Certainly
wasn't smiling at her.

"I'm worried about you."

"I'm sorry." Which was true enough. Jean sat back down at her desk,
glancing at the open files, trying to remember where she had been. A
mental sob cried through the room and she shivered slightly. The real
killer was that they didn't really sound like Paige, as such, and
she'd started to wonder if maybe they weren't Paige at all. Maybe it
was Jane, again, fighting her control. Or maybe one of the other girls
was in trouble, real trouble, and they were missing it in their concern
over Paige, just as they had missed it with Paige, because surely they
had missed it, surely they hadn't let her get this bad.

Scott froze at the thoughts that came down the link, swallowing. "This
is one of the first times you'd had the inhibitor dialed down enough
for me to be able to tell, this last week," he said a bit hoarsely.
"But you're not thinking clearly. Look at me, Jean." She did, and he
gazed back at her in concern. "You're not."

Well really, more than half a day every day for almost two weeks in
the continual mental presence of a paranoiac who was convinced she was
a monster, what did he think would happen? "I'm fine, Scott," she
said, shoving the stress as far back as she could. An idle thought
crossed her mind that maybe if she pushed it away far enough Jane
would take it and hide it wherever Jane was hiding in her mind, because
no one ever seemed to be able to feel her except Jean, so she must be
good at that. "And sleeping is unlikely to help anyway," she added,
off handedly.

"It would be a start," Scott said, seriously contemplating direct action.

Paige is the paranoiac, Jean thought, eyes narrowing as she
caught that thought from him. Paige. Not me. I've got enough of my
own problems. "Well, I go to sleep every night." Okay, sometimes it
was morning when she finally went to bed, but the point remains.
"Hasn't helped yet. Don't worry so much, Scott." Did Scott ever not
worry. An interesting question, really.

"Like telling the wind not to blow, or the sun not to shine." He
advanced on her slowly, determinedly. "Especially when I have good
cause. Which I do right now."

Of course, it wasn't paranoia if he was plotting against her.
Jean turned and glared at him. "What part of 'I'm fine' aren't you
getting? I do sleep, as much as I can, and this is important."

"It is important. But so is your health," Scott said, his tone
uncompromising. "And you're risking it by not sleeping. Your 'I'm
fine' has roughly the amount of truth behind it that mine would, and
that's saying a lot."

"I sleep as much as I can," Jean repeated, enunciating. "It's
not like I want these damned nightmares to wake me every time I close
my eyes," she added, arms wrapped around herself. "I can't sleep, but
I can work, so why won't you let me do that?" She wasn't crying but
her voice shook.

Scott reached out and laid a hand on her arm. "Look at me," he said
softly. "Jean, you trust me, don't you?" He stepped closer, sliding
his arm around her. "You're scaring me," he said, trying to keep his
voice light and not quite managing it. "And yeah, I know it doesn't
take a lot."

Jean shook a little in his arms. "I don't want to sleep, Scott. I've
been wearing the inhibitor pushed up at night but... I don't want to
sleep. I don't want to see that."

"Charles could help," he soothed. "You know he can. Come with me and see him?"

Moving so quickly there was no warning, Jean shoved away from him. "He
can't! I'm stuck in this place and it's never getting better, ok, and
I've fucking accepted it but I don't want him in my HEAD! Everybody's
in my head and I want them to get the hell out!" She glared at him,
not saying that he was one of the people in her head who
shouldn't be...

Scott didn't move towards her, not with the wildness in her voice. He
didn't know how far the inhibitor was dialed down, and he didn't want
to trigger anything. "It will get better," he said gently, keeping his
hands in front of him, palm-up. "It was getting better before you
started having trouble sleeping, and once you get some help with that
it will again."

"Just... I need to get back to work. I just want to get back to work.
Please, Scott... I'll take some pills or something and sleep tonight,
but... This has to be done." Her voice was shaking to match the
slight tremors in her body.

"Do you know how much you sound like me back in October?" Scott asked,
still softly but somewhat bleakly. He shook his head. "I'll hold you
to that," he said, even as he determined that if she wasn't going to
talk to Charles, he would. "Tonight."

"Fine. Tonight."