Scott and Jean, Friday night

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you can push a little too hard to get back to something approximating normality. Sometimes what happens when the facades crack is worth the pain.


Her hair was getting long.

Scott, sitting on the couch as he skimmed through a few last files before bed, found himself watching through the open bedroom door as Jean brushed her hair. Definitely longer than it had been, he thought, watching her.

The little rituals were calming. Small pieces of control that shaped out her day, proving... something, even if only to herself. Jean let the brush move slowly and carefully through her hair, counting out the strokes - something she hadn't done really since college. Every morning the bed got made, hospital corners and all, and she'd already turned down the sheets before changing into one of Scott's shirts she had all but stolen for her own use. Comfortable. It was comfortable. Controlled.

Scott watched her for another long moment - and then set the file aside. He stared down at the coffee table for another moment or two, his expression distant, distracted, before he rose, moving quietly into the bedroom as she set the brush down, but didn't move from in front of the mirror.

"I think I've got to consider this one permanently stolen at this point," he said very quietly, standing behind her. "The shirt, I mean."

Jean smiled at him in the reflection. "I'd give it back if you wanted," she said. "But I'd probably pout about it." Weak, as jokes went, but she was making jokes. This was progress.

"You look better in blue than I do. Now that I know blue when I see it..." The color looked good with her hair. Scott tilted his head, smiling a little. "Long enough for pigtails again, you know," he said.

"You just want a chance to pull them again - I'm on to you."

"I didn't pull them," Scott protested. "I just... gave them a little tweak. You had pink butterfly clips in them. It was bizarre." He raised a hand, not really thinking about what he was doing, his fingers brushing over the hair that fell loose across her shoulder.

"There's nothing bizarre about my butterfly clips. They're sparkly. That makes them automatically non-bizarre." His fingertips only just grazed her shoulder and Jean leaned into the touch.

"Clarice would be horrified to know you were stealing her gig long before she arrived." She hadn't jumped, Scott thought, registering that in the same instant as he registered what he'd done. "Or tickled, I don't know..." He sank slowly into a crouch beside the chair, until his eyes were on a level with Jean's in the mirror. He reached up and smoothed the thick fall of hair back over her shoulder, then leaned in, half-fearfully, pressing his lips to her temple just for a moment

"Possibly just confused," Jean suggested, "with a side order of awe? They never really do seem to understand that we didn't spring forth fully formed from Charles' head." She turned slightly towards him, eyes closing for a second as he kissed her - physical contact still seemed strange from him, or maybe it was the idea that he would want, hell, be willing to touch her that was strange.

He saw in the mirror the slightly tense, faintly bewildered look that flickered across her face, and wished, yet again, for the link to be able to see what was behind it. He could ask? Or he could not make the worst possible interpretation, and just... Scott reached out, gently turning her face towards his, and kissed her, on the lips this time.

Jean didn't understand it but, as she kept reminding herself, maybe she didn't have to. Instead she simply kissed him back - a soft, sweet kiss that still stole her breath away.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice low and uncertain as he drew back - if just enough to let her answer the question. She hadn't shoved him away and fled, that was probably a good sign.

Reaching over, she laced her fingers through his. There really wasn't a sensible answer to that question, so instead Jean said, "I love you," and kissed him again.

His stomach was doing agitated little flip-flops. Scott told it and his brain to shut up. Okay, he thought, drawing back again and getting up. Maybe not all of his brain - yet. "Come to bed?" he asked, holding her hands, trying to make it sound non-pressure-y without sounding diffident, because really, diffident was the absolute last thing he felt just now.

Rising to her feet to stand with him, Jean looked into his eyes. "I... You know about... about everything," she said quietly, "and you still... Still want me?"

Scott swallowed. "Yes," he said, his voice low and a bit hoarse. "I don't think I ever wouldn't. The last few months... there were times I wished I could stop wanting you. Needing you," he amended with a painful sort of honesty. "But I couldn't. And it made me so angry..." He hadn't intended to say that. "But I'm glad now, that I couldn't. I would never have forgiven myself now, if I had."

"Even Jane couldn't stop me from loving you, wanting you. Wanting you to want me. And her," she added with a mirthless little half-laugh. "Scott, we are officially completely crazy."

His shoulders sagged a little at the tight little laugh. "Maybe," he said, barely audible. Breaking eye contact, but not letting go of her hands. "I find it easier to forgive you than to forgive myself, or... other people." He wouldn't mention Bobby. "It's not putting you on a pedestal. It's just... not caring."

Jean winced inwardly, knowing she'd said something wrong, and her fingers tightened slightly. "I don't know how to forgive myself," she said softly, "and I don't know how you can forgive me. But I'm glad you can."

"I want this to work. I want us to be able to make this work, the right way..." Had he been wrong here, being impulsive like this? Pushing too hard...

"I don't think there is a right way. There's just the way that we try things, until it does work. And it will work." It had to - they both needed each other too much.

His stomach tied itself into several knots, merrily, and Scott swallowed, raising her hands to his lips and kissing the back of each. "Right," he said a bit unevenly. Wrong. Something was wrong, he was doing something wrong here, he knew it. He just couldn't see it.

Freeing one of her hands, she cupped his cheek, bringing his eyes up to look at her. "Scott? Talk to me. I can't... I don't know what you're thinking."

He looked up at her, his real eye burning. "I don't know what to say," he said, hoarsely and helplessly. "I don't know how to put it into words. I'm scared to death. The only time I'm not is when I stop thinking, and that can't be right. I can't shut off the part of me that pays attention to what you're saying and what you're maybe not saying, because I..." His throat tightened. "I have to see. If I don't see, this might all go wrong again."

Jean swallowed, her own throat suddenly tight. "Not just you," she said. "I swear to God that the last thing I want to do is even risk losing you again."

"You didn't lose me in the first place," Scott said, almost before she finished speaking. "You didn't. I don't know how to make you believe that."

"Alkali," Jean whispered, clarifying, "and now this. It's too close, and I can't keep doing this. To you. To me. To us."

Scott stared at her, utterly at a loss for words, and very nearly for air - the vice around his chest was squeezing tighter and tighter and he was actually feeling light-headed.

He found the words eventually. Because he had to. "You are not," he said, his voice barely audible, "some sort of... recurring disaster, Jean. You're the woman I love. You're my wife. But more than that, you're someone who deserves to be happy, and if I have to tell you that every day for the rest of your life until you believe it, I will."

Burying her face in his shoulder for a second, Jean said, "It may take that long." But before he could reply she lifted her head to kiss him.

Confused, shaken more than he wanted to let on, he took her in his arms, kissing her back with a little more desperation than he really should be letting her see. What had happened to his worry about pushing her?

Jean's fingers tangled themselves in the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. Scott wasn't the only one who was confused - she didn't know what she wanted, other than him in her life. But that she wanted unquestionably.

"... Jean, wait," he murmured unsteadily. "Are you sure?" He felt like such an idiot for the question. Was he worrying so much about not pushing her that he was missing obvious signals?

Closing her eyes, Jean rested her forehead against his, shaking slightly in his arms. "I'm sure that I love you," she whispered. "I'm sure that I want you. I don't think I'm sure of anything else in the whole world, but that I am sure of."

"... no." It slipped out before Scott could stop himself. He took a half-step back, only far enough to give them both a little space, but not far enough that he had to let go of her. "That's not enough," he said, pain twisting in his chest and his voice ragged, but almost calm. "That's not enough for either of us. We can't do this. Not like this."

"It's all that I have!" It burst out of Jean without warning, more emphatic that she'd meant to let on. "I don't know anything about me anymore. Who am I, Scott? I can't tell anymore." Only the fact that he was still holding onto her kept her from collapsing.

"Then you have to find out." It felt like someone was stabbing him. Quite literally. "You have to find out, Jean," he forced himself to continue, still holding her upright, "and I'll be here to help however I can. But I'm not a substitute for knowing the answer to that question, and I'm not the answer."

"I know," Jean said, calming slightly. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I love you." He really hoped that at some point in the future, he could stop feeling quite this... hopeless, when he said that. It was the truth, but it felt like such a fragile, useless thing in the face of all of this. "You can rely on that. You can depend on it. But all it can be is... a piece of solid ground, if you need it." Oh. Oh, that was rich. Rich and ridiculous, and he would so be laughing at himself in absolute fucking contempt if this hadn't been utterly the wrong time.

"I love you, too," Jean said, hiding her face in his shoulder again. "And I'm sorry. So sorry." Her arms tightened again, as though she feared he'd leave.

"It's the only... demand I'm going to make in any of this, you know," Scott said, swallowing past the lump in his throat, not quite able to believe what he was saying to her. "I won't be your excuse for not being honest with yourself. Not ever." Not again.

Jean looked up, eyes wide, but then, surprisingly, she smiled. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me." Absurdly, he was smiling back, although it was a shaky, half-terrified smile. "You have no idea how difficult that was to say."

"Which I'd say requires thanking even more." She leaned forward to give him a quick kiss. "You can even have your choice of reward. I'm thinking we could either have sex - only, you know, because I love you and you love me and it's fun and not because I'm crazy and needy - or we could have pizza. But feel free to suggest alternatives."

He could breathe again. He wasn't sure precisely what had changed. "I don't know," Scott murmured a bit hoarsely, kissing her forehead and then wrapping his arms around her and holding on tight. "Sex. Pizza. It's a tough decision."

Not knowing what or how or why things changed was the worst part of these stupid mood swings, but this one Jean would take. Leaning into his arms she said, "I know. And just think, what if I'd added chocolate to the list. You'd never decide."

"I think we can skip the chocolate and the pizza," Scott said after another moment. "I'm not all that hungry." He looked in the direction of the bed, swallowing. "Come to bed," he said, a bit unsteadily. "It's either that or I go back to the paperwork, and I know which I'd prefer."

"Glad to hear I still rank higher than the paperwork," Jean said, giving a gentle tug on his hand before leaning in for a kiss.

"Always."