Scott and Jean

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Much, -much- later, Jean wakes up alone in bed - not a condition likely to inspire calm in her these days - and goes looking for her wayward husband.



He wasn't there. He wasn't there and he was supposed to be there but he wasn't there.

Jean was going to find him and tie him to the damned bed.

Scott was in the stables. At 2am. He'd been out there later on other nights, with his sax, but he'd been particularly restless tonight, waking up from vague and disturbing dreams multiple times before he'd finally decided to abandon the idea of sleeping for now.

The problem with being generally too angry with him to let him into her head was that she had to choose - continue shutting him out, or open the link enough to find him. But when he wasn't in his office or the sit room or any of his usual haunts she became worried (hysterical) enough to give in. Which meant that Scott had some forewarning of both her presence and her mood as she headed for the stables.

The music from the saxophone fell silent as Jean opened the doors to the stable. Scott leaned back against the wall of the stall, sighing. "I'm down here," he called - not loudly, but loud enough for her to hear him.

"Yes," Jean started, then cut herself off as she heard the faint tremor of... exhaustion, she decided. Had to be. Nothing could have been threatening him, so the panic was unjustified. It was just late and she was tired. Rather than continue either speaking or justifying, she moved through the rows of stalls, leaning against the door of the one he was in instead of entering it.

Scott let the sax lean against his shoulder, looking up at her. The dark circles under his eyes were noticeable even in the dimly lit stable. "I'm sorry. I should have left a note."

"Would have appreciated it," she agreed. "When did you leave?" Jean suspected it hadn't taken her that long to wake up, but the searching the house meant he might well have been out here a while. Besides, asking 'when' was easier than 'why', which was still way too charged of a question.

"About half an hour ago. Just... couldn't handle the dreams." Scott fiddled absently with one of the keys on the saxophone. "Not nightmares. Just weird."

"Tell me?" she asked, the shook her head when he hesitated. "Or play. I... I haven't heard you play in a long time."

Scott paused for a moment, then brought the saxophone back to his lips. What came out wasn't one of the jazz standards he tended to prefer, wasn't any recognizable piece of music at all. It wandered, meandered even, fragments of melody surfacing amid otherwise atonal passages. It was strange, unsettling, yet oddly absorbing at the same time.

Jean closed her eyes after a moment, letting the music wash over her. She didn't really want to relax, but it was working anyway.

It trailed off, as if Scott had run out of ideas, or inspiration. He let the sax rest against his shoulder again, looking up at her. Waiting for some kind of reaction.

Slowly Jean opened her eyes. "You've gotten better," she said after a moment. "I've missed... this." And suddenly there were tears in her eyes at the thought of how close they'd come to never having this again.

It demanded some sort of response. Scott pulled himself to his feet, stiff and still too sore, something that hadn't been helped by the chilll in the air. He came over to the door of the stall, leaning against it as well. "Don't cry," he said quietly. "Please."

"Trying not to," she said, turning away from him slightly.

He watched her turn away, and couldn't help but withdraw a little himself, back off the link at the very least. She needed time, he thought, and he didn't particularly have the right to push her to get over this faster. He went back over to where he'd left the sax, kneeling down and opening up the case.

"I'm sorry," she didn't look at him, was still blinking back the tears and not able to look at him, but she meant it possibly more ways than he knew. "I didn't mean to make you stop... Well, I did," she admitted after a moment. "Meant to come down here and drag you back and tie you somewhere I could keep an eye on you but... I didn't mean to make you stop. You don't have to."

"You know," Scott said, meticulously cleaning the sax, "starting about two weeks after you left for Tibet, I'd come down here every night. Usually around this time, although sometimes later. Sleep... I didn't really get back into the habit of sleeping until the middle of October."

Deep breaths, and stop with the overanalyzing. Right now, it's not helping. Usually doesn't, really. A little sniffle and she was under control enough to turn back and watch him pack away the sax. "What happened in October?"

"I wanted to build a cannon." He knew it was a non sequitur, but didn't look at her to see if he got a bewildered look or not.

"Did you?" Jean's voice was bland. She was on the verge of writing this all off as a very strange dream - it had that dreamlike quality where she could feel everything a little too well, a little too sharply.

"As a shop project. I remember, I researched it all, came up with a hook to tie it into the history classes... I was so proud of myself," Scott said, laying the body of the sax back into the case. "I posted about it, and... well, suffice to say that I was dropping that idea before the end of the day. It was deemed inappropriate for our students." He paused. "I'm not making much sense, am I..."

Scott looked back over his shoulder, met her eyes. "It was when things started feeling real again," he said. "When I realized I was back experiencing the... life of the school, I guess you'd call it. Then Logan and Crystal had their Incident, and that just hammered it home. Life went on. Everything I turned, the world was pinching me, reminding me it was out there. And I hated it," Scott said with a sigh, looking back at the instrument case. "Or part of me did. I think I would have liked the world to stop, just for a little bit... but it never did. And in October, I had to decide whether or not I was going to go on being half-alive."

Jean nodded, pressing her hand against the rough wood of the stall wall, but she didn't say anything.

"It was very... undramatic, in the end. All in here." Scott tapped his own temple. "The dreams didn't stop. There were a couple of weeks I woke up screaming, or sobbing, night after night... but that was an improvement. At least I was feeling it."

"Well, talking to a telepath, things that are all in the head aren't that undramatic. But... I know what you mean. The feeling's better than the other option. That much I learned from Jane."

"In a way, it was a surrender, though," Scott said a bit distractedly, closing the lid of the case, fiddling with the snaps. "You accused me of being fatalistic in Florida. I'm wondering if that's not where I picked up that habit. Except I suppose there's a difference between letting go and just living, and letting go and dying."

Jean's hand closed into a fist almost without thinking about it, and she held it pressed up against the wall, but wasn't dumb enough to test her dreaming theory by actually punching it. "A little bit," she agreed, keeping her voice level. "And between fighting to keep from living and simply to keep living."

Scott was silent for a moment. "The night you left," he said finally, "I went down to Harry's and got drunk. Ororo came and retrieved me. I remember telling her that it hurt too much, and I wished I could just lay down and die. I meant it." His voice was low, almost inaudible, but he rose, turning to face her, and his gaze was almost painfully level. "I meant it - but that is the only time in my life that I did. Ever. I didn't want to die this weekend, Jean. I really, truly didn't. I just... didn't feel like I had any choices. And yes, in hindsight it was just thunderously stupid, all things considered. But I didn't have the benefit of hindsight that day."

"We never do," Jean said, and finally stepped into the stall, crouching down on the other side of the case. "Even Marie-Ange and Nathan can't see things well enough to know everything, or even near to, and maybe, maybe, given we didn't know and Charles hadn't told me they were on their way. Maybe it was the sensible choice. But that didn't make it the right one." Her voice was shaking like a leaf compared to his. "And we're back, through acts of God and Nathan and amphetamines and I'm still... I'm still frightened. And I'm still angry. And damnit, my eye fucking hurts. And it's not fair, but there it is."

He reached up, his fingertrips gliding over the bruises on her cheekbone, too soft to hurt. "Given how long I was angry at you for dying... well, those who live in glass houses can't throw stones." His voice was curiously dispassionate in comparison to the gentleness of his touch.

"Damn you," she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes again but she wasn't crying. "And damn me, too. Why do we keep doing this?"

"Too much responsibility, too much self-denial, and all of it at too young an age. That would be my guess, at least." Scott let his hand fall back to the instrument case. "We don't precisely have a normal perspective on the world and on ourselves, do we?"

"Told you the answer was to blame Charles." Standing up again, she turned to lean against the wall, and as long as she could keep her shoulders from shaking, he probably couldn't tell she was crying.

Scott rose again, in a much smoother movement. "I think we're a little too old to be blaming the Professor for our problems. At some point, you do it to yourself."

"Oh, well, that at least I have some experience with." And she almost wanted Jane back, which was wrong. She wanted to break something. Wanted to hurt something, even if it was herself, just so there could be something to point at and go 'that, that's why I'm hurting' that wasn't Scott.

Scott laid a hand on her shoulder. "I need to shut up," he said, sounding curiously drained. "I talk and talk and it doesn't mean anything."

And now he could feel the shaking from the repressed sobs. "I'm not so sure that it doesn't," Jean said, her voice catching.

"I just remember what happened when we didn't talk." Scott came around to face her, reaching out and taking her face between his hands, so that she had to either look at him or be much more obvious about not making eye contact. "You know, though, if you would have preferred to hit me a few more times..."

There was nothing particularly lovely about tear tracks down her cheeks, but at least she was secure in the knowledge that Scott wouldn't care. "Kind of," Jean said, voice small. She pressed her cheek into one of his hands. "Being angry's easier."

"We could always have our own little private boxing night. Or you could just use me as a ping-pong ball." He wiped away one of the tear-tracks, gently. "I've always appreciated your tendency to play rough."

"See, that thought just leads back to me tying you to the bed." It wasn't much of a smile, what with the tears still leaking from her eyes, but it was there.

"Since when have you actually needed to tie me to the bed to keep me there if you really wanted me to stay put?" He wasn't sure where this conversation had changed to mutual teasing, but he wasn't about to complain.

"Since you decided sucker punching me was a potential alternative." She actually stuck her tongue out at him.

Well, there was only one proper response to that. He leaned in and kissed her, and he didn't make it a brief kiss.

Jean kissed him back, just shy of desperately. This, at least, was uncomplicated.

"So there's talking," Scott said when they both came up for air, "and then there's saying 'screw talking' and getting rid of tension the old-fashioned way."

"What, screw talking and talk screwing?" There was an edge of hysteria in the laugh that preceded that, but Jean wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in his shoulder, taking a few deep breaths.

"You're alive and I'm alive. And I'm a stupid bastard, and you're something of a hypocrite, but I think we love each other in spite of that. Which is something."

"Something of a hypocrite? And here I'd even allow as much as Queen of the Hypocrites. But yes, in spite of all that, and possibly because of all that, we are definitely something." Jean lifted her head and kissed him again before he could reply.

It reminded him of something. "You know," he said, when he could, "the stable was on our list. Remember our list?" The grin he gave her was downright cocky. "We never did get to half of that list..."

That got a real, proper laugh out of her. "You are absolutely correct, the stables were... possibly are on the list. We're in the stables. Serendipity, no?"

"That's one word for it." And at that point, he made an executive discussion that it really was enough talking.