Scott and Jean, Wednesday morning

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Scott and Jean wake up, a little the worse for wear after their Tibetan adventure. That's not, however, the reason that they decide not to get out of bed.


His head hurt. Scott groaned softly, turning into the pillow, and heard an aggravated mew as Des vacated her perch. "Sorry," he muttered - and then froze as an arm slid around his waist from behind.

Jean wasn't even awake yet. When she did wake up, most likely, there would be mental pauses and 'why is the bed soft? And warm? And occupied?', but right now she was easily still 80% asleep, and curling into Scott was natural and right.

Scott stared at the wall of the bedroom, letting the memories of the previous thirty-six hours or so fall into place. Jean. That was Jean, curled up against him. Jean was back. In their bed.

There was thinking going on in her head. And it wasn't her. There was thinking going on in the part of her head that was reserved for Scott, the part that had been quietly dull for four months. Slowly her mind moved towards consciousness and, as expected, it started with 'mmm, soft, warm bed'.

Scott shifted around so that he didn't have his back to the Jean in his bed. "Hi," he said softly as she resettled herself against him, head on his shoulder.

The shifting, and his voice, brought her all the way out of sleep and Jean opened her eyes to look up at him. "Er, hi." They hadn't exactly been avoiding touching each other when they'd crawled into bed last night, but it had been a far cry from her curled up at his side with her head pillowed on his shoulder.

"Sleep okay? I think I slept like the dead," Scott said slowly. That seemed vaguely wrong. He was sleeping in the same bed as his wife for the first time in four months and he hadn't noticed?

Really, there should not be anything awkward about waking up in bed with your husband. That was what was supposed to be normal. Yet more proof that the two of them were anything but. "Yes," Jean said, "very well. Thank you."

"... do we flip a coin to see who gets the shower first?" Scott asked, his lips twitching helplessly. "Damn, Jean, it shouldn't be this awkward..."

"It really shouldn't. You and I? We fail at normal." But she grinned as she said it, then winced as the motion tugged at the bruise on her cheek.

"I need aspirin," Scott muttered, detaching her gently as he sat up. His muscles protested, loudly, and he suppressed a wince as he slid out of bed. He needed something considerably stronger than aspirin, but no, not going there. "Shall I just bring out the bottle and two glasses of water?" he asked wryly.

"Yes, please. My head is pounding." Jean was quite proud of herself at managing not to pout when he stood up.

Scott vanished into the washroom and came back with the aspirin and one glass of water. "I figure we can share the glass. I don't feel like venturing out to the kitchen for another." He sank down on the bed, handing her the glass while he opened the bottle of aspirin. Amelia wouldn't scold him for this. He had after all gotten knocked around a bit the previous day.

Jean pushed herself up into a sitting position, leaning back against the headboard. "Fair enough." Finally taking in her surroundings again, Jean spotted the cat, scowling at her from across the room. "Am I going to have to buy your cats affections, or is she going to get over this intrusion?"

"She likes tuna," Scott said, his lips twitching again. "And cheese, actually..."

Taking the offered pair of pills, Jean knocked them back before giving him the glass of water. "How's she take to catnip? Can I get your cat stoned?" The look she gave him was Perfectly Innocent. Really.

"I've never given her catnip," Scott said after a moment, pondering the idea. "I think that would be rather frightening. She's destructive enough as is." Scott went to shake a couple more aspirin out into his hand, hesitated, then went ahead and did it. "Are you going to stand and 'oooh' at the shower? That monastery didn't have running water, I'm guessing."

"Oh yes, there will be much indulging in hot, running water. If you want to go first, that might be a good idea. Otherwise you're not getting the shower back for at least an hour." Jean stretched her arms up over her head, yawning slightly.

"I tend to take very brief showers these days. I might take you up on that and go first," Scott said wryly. But he didn't move, even so. There was a part of him that didn't really want to get up and face the day just yet. Didn't want to leave the sunlit bedroom where it was just him and her - and the cat, of course.

Jean eyed him, then snuggled down back under the blankets, smiling. "Or, alternatively, we can tell the world to fuck off for a bit and curl up a little longer."

"There's an idea. The world's not always my favorite place, after all." He laid back down beside her, feeling only a moment of awkwardness. It just felt right to be waking up beside her, everything else aside. It didn't have much if anything to do with conscious thought. He reached out and laid a hand over hers.

"Exactly. And it's not as though there's anywhere worth being that's better than right here, right now." She laced her fingers through his, running her thumb lightly along his palm.

"You know, only Logan and Marie knew where we were going," he said after a moment. "I didn't make any kind of announcement on the team journal."

"And we got in late last night... Do you mean no one knows I'm here yet?" Jean paused, eyebrows raising, then grinned. "This could be fun."

"I can hear the gleam in your eyes," Scott said whimsically. "But yes. No one knows you're here besides the four of us - and Charles, of course."

"Well, yes, that's a given. And it's hard to sneak up on Nate. Which means I totally have to show up in 'Ro's office and tell her I'm working on my course schedule for next term, just for the look on her face." The quiet giggle was only sort of evil in nature.

Scott sighed a bit. "'Ro's had a hard couple of weeks. Go easy on her, okay?" He smiled a bit tightly. "And I would be careful about even trying to sneak up on Nate. He's been really twitchy since he came back from Prague and I don't really think you need to find out if you can block him if he tries to put you through a wall."

Jean's smile faded, and she blinked at Scott. "Prague?"

"... that's right. You were on a mountaintop cut off from the outside world," Scott said somewhat ruefully. "The Czech government overreacted to some post-San Diego violence - anti-mutant groups, mutant militants, there was stuff happening from both sides. They kind of created the equivalent of an internment camp, inside Prague. Elpis got in there as part of a humanitarian assessment team just as it all blew up."

"Oh, God..." Jean's voice trailed off as she picked up some of the images in Scott's mind from the news broadcasts.

"I'm sure Nate'd be happy to tell you more about it, when you talk to him. Well... not happy, but willing." He squeezed her hand gently. "I'm worried about 'Ro, too. She was off with Remy, in the middle of a mess... it's complicated. She's sorting through a lot right now."

"I can believe it," Jean said, distractedly. It wasn't that she had thought life at the mansion would have stopped or a miracle would have occurred and things would have been quiet and peaceful while she was gone. It was more that she simply hadn't thought about it yet. Less than two days before everything had been quiet and peaceful in her world - too quiet and peaceful, really, and it hadn't seemed that quiet would ever end. And then Mystique had been there and there hadn't been time to think about any of this. And now she was home. She was in New York, the center of the world, as any New Yorker will tell you. A far cry from the mountains of Tibet, at least.

Scott couldn't help but overhear her train of thought. "It's going to take you a while to get used to everything again, I know," he said quietly. "You need a few hours away at any point, just let me know." He smiled crookedly. "I did buy a new car."

"A new car?" She latched on to the distraction, tilting her head inquisitively. "Do tell."

"Silver. Fast. I'll have to properly introduce you." He smiled, a bit wistfully this time. "I figured it was time. Damn, did I ever get weirdly dysfunctional about the machines I love this year..."

"It's been a rough year," Jean said, squeezing his hand. "Certainly some of it was understandable. But if you tell me you've done something to the bike, I may cry."

"Oh, no. The bike's just where it should be. Although I haven't been taking it out as much as I should." He laughed softly. "You'll like the car. Although the trunk might dictate you having to learn to pack a little lighter."

"Given our mutual speed addiction, I'm sure that if you like the car, I will like the car. Although my wardrobe will not thank you." She grinned. "We'll just have to take a vacation somewhere I only have to wear a swimsuit."

"Somewhere sunny..." He was still tired, and his head did hurt. The aspirin could kick in anytime now. "Our need for vacations is verging on the pathological sometimes, you know." Now he was rambling.

"Sunny is always good," Jean agreed. She pulled their joined hands up to kiss his lightly. "I've just come back, though, I need no holiday. But when's the last time you took some time off, love?"

Scott blinked and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "I went back to work at the start of the term," he said after a moment. "Didn't do anything team-wise until a few weeks after that... I started doing some training work. Programming Danger Room scenarios and the like. I've only been back in training myself for a grand total of about a week." He flushed suddenly, part of him comparing his relatively leisurely last few months with the work Jean had almost certainly been putting in at the monastery. "I've kind of been coasting, I suppose."

Jean propped herself up on her elbow, gazing down at Scott. She could feel his disquiet, a strange contrast to the complete calm she'd been surrounded by with the monks, and it worried her. It didn't really surprise her that he'd been taking things slowly, not after everything that had happened, but this feeling that he was simultaneously upset with himself about taking things so carefully and unwilling to do otherwise couldn't be helping him. "Not something I'd ever have imagined you saying."

"Well..." He took a look at what he'd just said, at the logic and the dominant emotions behind it. A step back, so to speak. "I'm trying to be a little more forthright about things," he said, looking up at her. "It's the funniest thing," he went on, "but if you get it out there sometimes it even starts making sense. Or at least, I see how I'm not making sense."

"Yes," Jean said, nodding. "I can see how that would help. Or, at any rate, I know exactly how much the lying to yourself thing doesn't help." Her smile was more than a little wry.

"That was what got me started thinking about things that way, you know," Scott said, a flicker of real humor in his eye. "And it does help. Eventually. Doesn't it? You start to be able to accept 'Hey, I'm human and fallible and I have my ugly moments'."

"It does help," she assured him, "really and truly. Takes a bit, but you get there. And I'm proud of you for trying."

"It was that or... actually, I don't know that there was another option." Scott gazed up at her somewhat pensively, then reached up and smoothed the rumpled hair back away from her face, his fingers lingering briefly. "You know," he said, "if you go poof suddenly and I discover you were never here, I'm going to be terribly disappointed."

She leaned slightly into his touch. "I've done that far too often, haven't I?" Her tone was soft, light, belying the depth of emotion behind her words. "Definitely not in the plans, though."

"You know, we could always just stay in here and let the rumors build out there. 'Where's Scott?' 'Oh, he's in his room with a redhead.'"

Jean chuckled. "I do always enjoy letting them stew, yes. And more than enjoy the 'staying in here' part of the plan."

"I think they can wait," Scott said after a moment, more firmly. "I think you and I deserve a little time before we have to turn this all into yet another chapter of All My Mutants."

"You know, I think we do, too, but it does beg the question: what are we going to do instead?" She kept her tone light, although there was a hint of challenge in her eyes. Jean was not about to push him, she was clear on that, but it had been four months since they'd been together.

Scott, surprisingly, raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, well, I was thinking a nice game of bridge..." Before she could laugh at him, or react in any other way that might have come to mind, he reached up and pulled her down close enough to kiss. Properly.

Jean's brain basically shut off for the moment as she melted into his kiss, giving back as good as she got. The best she could manage was a telepathic #missed you# as he deepened the kiss.

"You know," he said as they came up for air, "there's just something about running around in exotic locales rescuing ancient artifacts and watching my very hot wife kick the ass of someone who really needed her ass kicked..."

"Gets the blood pumping, hmm?"

"Just call me an adrenaline junkie."