Scott and Jean, Monday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Jean has something to tell Scott. Yes, that.


Jean was sitting crosslegged on the couch, a pencil tapping against her lips as she thought. She knew Scott was on his way up, and maybe lying in wait for him wasn't really fair, but this was definitely a conversation that needed to be had in private. Jean was determined, resolute even, and nervous as all get out about what Scott was going to say. The pencil continued to tap away as she ran her mind through a couple of calming patterns.

He was getting the impression, as he headed upstairs, that Jean was wrestling with something. What, Scott wasn't sure, because every time the link rippled it smoothed back out again before he could pin down what she was thinking. That was hardly fair, was it? Especially since he was fairly sure she was planning to wrestle whatever it was into submission and then throw it at him. It just had that feel about it.

She, of course, had all of the good and sensible and perfectly logical reasons why she was going to get back on the team. The problem was that this was a topic that neither of them could be logical about for more than three minutes, which is why it just kept Not Coming Up. But that was going to change now. This was too important to keep putting off.

Scott came through the door, blinking at the sight of her on the couch, playing with a pencil. Again. That was never a good sign. He raised an eyebrow and closed the door behind him. "What?"

"Take a seat," Jean said, "I want to talk to you about something. I'm..." The soft option wasn't the way to go. She was determined, and he had a right to know that. "I want back on the team, Scott. I'm going to go back into training, for real."

Scott froze. Not moving towards the couch. "Jean," he said, very calmly, "you can't control your powers."

"That is one of the many things the training is for," she answered. "My telepathy is fully under conscious control again, so it is simply a matter of regaining stamina, and i believe I am getting much closer to controling my TK." Especially once she had realized she had subconsciously tapped it while working to save alison. It was clear she could still use it for more than just the brute force smashing that had happened every other time she tapped it.

Scott stood where he was, watching her. The calm way she was looking at him was almost convincing, but - not quite. The odd ripple was still slipping down the link. And she was sitting up a little too straight on the couch. Never mind the pencil.

And if he focused on all the body language hints and suggestions, maybe he could go right on ignoring - what had it been? A question? Her informing him of her intentions? The latter, he thought dimly, definitely the latter.

"Yes, definitely the latter," Jean said, answering the unvoiced thought. "I am going back into proper training. I know it will be a while, probably a long while before i'm really in a condition for full team status, but I'm going to get there."

"Ah." Scott stared at her for another long moment, then shook his head. "Right," he said curtly, and walked into the bedroom.

Jean briefly contemplated suffocating herself in one of the throw pillows before standing up to follow him. "Scott...?" she tried, hesitating in the doorway.

"What?" It wasn't quite snapped out, but close. Scott pulled his t-shirt over his head and tossed it in the direction of the hamper, yanking open the nearest drawer to find a fresh one. He should have stayed out running longer. "You told me. There's not a chance in the world that Charles would be anything but madly supportive of the idea, so that's that. You'll go back into training."

Suffocation would definitely have been less painful. "This was going to happen, Scott. Sooner or later you knew this would come up. I can't not do this. I can't give up on the dream, not without giving up a part of who I am."

"Of course you can't. And I wouldn't ask you to... couldn't ask you to, without being a hypocrite." This times, the words came out clipped, much colder. "So that's settled." He couldn't seem to quite concentrate on picking a shirt.

"Settled, right. that's why you won't look at me and your mind's gone ice-flavored." Jean wrapped her arms around her waist, feeling like there wasn't enough air in the room.

"Give me a day or two. I'm sure I'll be able to fake the appropriate enthusiasm." Scott stopped rummaging in the drawer and looked up at her, his jaw clenched so hard it was beginning to ache. "I can't be Alison, who's somehow managed to figure out how to have a partnership in the field with the person she loves," he said, his voice clipped. He'd thought he had that question answered once. How very, very wrong he'd been.

"I'm not asking for enthusiasm, I'm asking you not to shut me out. I'm asking you not to run away from this, from me."

"How precisely am I supposed to run from this?" Scott asked, finally yanking a shirt out of the drawer and pulling it on. He told himself to dial it back a little. "I'm not going to leave all the training work to other people or anything, don't worry," he said restlessly. "I'm not that much of a coward."

"I'm not talking about that. I don't care who's supervising my training. I'm talking about this, right here. I'm talking about you shutting down, shutting me out. You're not the only one who's scared, Scott." Jean was shaking, holding herself tighter to hide it.

Scott closed his eyes for a moment. Composure, he thought, and opened them again. "The training's... liable to take you long enough," he said slowly, still not moving towards her, "given that you have to get your powers the rest of the way back under control, that you'll have time for it to... start feeling right again. And you probably haven't forgotten as much as you think."

"Start feeling right for which one of us?" It wasn't that she didn't understand his fear, nor did she begrudge him it. but she couldn't back down on this, not this time.

"I'm not asking you to back down!" It came out far too loud, too angry, the gut response to the thought that had slipped down the link just... taking over. Scott bit his lip, hard. "How could you ever think I would ask you to do that?" he asked, his voice hoarse but lower. "That I would be such a hypocrite, that I would ever think I had the right to ask you to sit at home while I wasn't?"

"I know you would never ask." Jean's voice was as quiet as his had been loud and shook with each breath. "Doesn't mean I don't know you want it. That you hate the idea, are terrified of it. and we neither of us get the option of not facing that."

"Facing it." Scott met her eyes - he could do that much - but still didn't move towards her. "I think we'll both be doing that whether we like it or not. Living with it."

Jean moved into the room, giving Scott plenty of room as she made her way to the bed, sitting down and pulling her legs up. "Just so long as we're still doing it together," she said, sounding tired.

Scott made a sudden movement that was half-shiver, half-recoiling from... all of this, the whole inevitable situation. Jean was who she was, and would be what she wanted to be, and because she was who she was and he was who he was and loved her, there was nothing he could do but accept it. Dress it up, add any complication you felt like, and in the end it didn't matter. It would be this way because she wanted it to be, needed it to be, and he had the choice of coping or not. And not meant losing her, even if, once upon a time, coping had meant losing her, too.

Put like that, it was kind of depressing.

He turned around, moving a bit jerkily towards the bed and sitting down beside her. "Don't," he said numbly, putting his arms around her. "Just don't. I'm not going anywhere."

Jean buried her head, no longer able to keep the quiet tears from escaping to burn tracks down her cheeks. "I hate that I hurt you like this," she said, voice muffled. "I love you so much, and I'm so afraid of losing you."

"Don't cry." His voice was softer, and he raised a hand to stroke her hair. "I just..." Scott faltered, quashing the little flicker of misery before it could escape down the link. "I don't want you to think I don't trust you. Or that I don't think you can do this. I know you can. I know..."

"We're both so good at ripping each other into little shreds." Jean sniffed softly - she knew him well enough to guess at his feelings, even when he covered them over. "I don't think you doubt me."

"I just can't..." The tightening in his chest choked off the words, and Scott took a deep, shaky breath. "I don't want you to think that I want you to be less than you are. That I'd want you to sit here in the mansion where you couldn't so much as stub your toe for the rest of your life, because of what happened..."

Jean nodded shakily, leaning a little more into his arms but not saying anything. There wasn't anything she could say, and everytime she breathed in she had to fight to keep from sobbing.

Oh, he was such a shit. He really was. Scott hugged her more tightly. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have... I should have been able to do better than this. I'm so sorry."

"You don't have to..." Jean managed, finally unburying her face long enough to turn and rebury it in his shoulder. "Not your... I knew... Don't want to... Never going to..." She couldn't finish the sentences, couldn't say the words for the constriction in her throat, but the thoughts were there, clear as daylight in her mind.

She had known this conversation would be painful, for both of them, and it was no more his fault that he was frightened and hurt than it was his fault that the sun didn't revolve around the earth. She didn't blame him and she didn't want him to blame himself and she was never, ever going to leave him again.

She was practically hammering him over the head with that last unspoken promise, and something in Scott finally crumbled. She couldn't promise that. She couldn't. Even if there had never been an Alkali Lake in their shared past, there was what had just happened with Alison, and all the other close calls and near-disasters and...

The fear was almost a living thing, tearing at him from the inside out, but it was only because he loved her so much. His life had started to make sense again, with her back in it, and the thought of losing that, going back to that damned emptiness...

Jean clung to him, her determination pushing away at the fear that leaked into her mind for, while her mind knew that she couldn't control death anymore than she could control life, her heart swore that she would move heaven and earth if she had to to always be with this man. And it would go very, very badly for anyone who tried to stop her.

And the promise didn't come from her head, it came from her heart. From the very base of her soul.

"Love you," Scott said a bit faintly, clinging to her just as hard. "Just so scared of losing you again." He gave a weak little laugh, trying to rally himself back to something approaching normalcy. "And maybe a little overly male, deep down..."

Jean's shoulders shook with the laugh she supressed, fearing it would come out a touch hysterical. "Love you, too, more than anything."

Scott raised a still-shaky hand and stroked her hair gently. "It's been a shit of a week," he muttered. "We're both a little strung out still, I think."

"It has," Jean agreed, leaning her head on his shoulders and reaching up to brush away the tracks of her tears. "Can we just stay here for a while?" There was a touch of uncertanty in her voice.

"I don't really want to go anywhere else just now." And didn't want to let her go. Not yet. Scott closed his eyes, trying to slow down his breathing, let go of the emotional turbulence. It would only help both of them.

Jean slowed her breathing to match his, settling her mind into a calmer pattern, although her heart was still pounding and her hands shook slightly. It was okay, she told herself. He was still here, so it would be okay.