Log: Jean and Scott

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Home from dealing with giant purple dragons, Scott gets to deal with Jean's delayed reaction to ending up in the ocean.



Scott was tired, aggravated, in a fair amount of pain, and worried about his wife. She'd actually left him and his knee to Amelia, which had surprised him, but given what had happened on the ship, maybe it shouldn't have. Moving rather clumsily on his crutches, he hobbled out of the elevator and started down the hall towards the door to their suite. He could sense that she was in there, trying very hard to hold onto her composure. Losing battle, I think... Especially when she'd been fighting it all the way home.

Jean was, she observed distantly, still shivering. Of course, even in the middle of summer the middle of the ocean was not the warmest place to have been, but she was dry now, and warm, and still shivering. And doing this distant, almost clinical analysis she'd learned to be wary of. Needing the maximum amount of comfort she could manage, she'd pulled on one of Scott's shirts before climbing into the arm chair with an entirely superfluous afghan wrapped around her shoulders, legs pulled up so she could hug her knees to her chest. Deep breaths. It would be ok. She was not going to break.

Scott managed to get the door open, and himself into the room. It had been a solid two years since the last time he'd been on crutches, and he seemed to have lost the knack. "Uhh.. hi, Jean," he said somewhat gingerly at the sight of her, as he closed the door behind him. He didn't bother asking if she was okay.

"Hello, I'm glad you're home," she said, and then realized vaguely that possibly talking had been a bad idea. "Sorry about Amelia," she went on, the words starting to rush together slightly. "And the knee. How is the knee? I'm sorry about it, you know. And about, well, this, because I don't mean to worry you and I'm pretty sure this is not the way to avoid worrying you, but really, I'm not all right just now. At all." And then she bit her tongue to stop the disturbing flow of words.

"I'd kind of guessed that." Light, but not flippantly so. Scott made his laborious way over to the couch, sitting down and setting the crutches aside. "The brace is a pain in the ass," he said, "and I'm going to hurt in the morning. But it's not like I haven't dislocated it before. You want to come over here?" he went on, his tone not altering. "I can't quite join you in the armchair."

"I, um, very much," she said, but it still took Jean a few moments to force her hands to unlock and stand up. Also, when she was standing it became slightly more obvious that she was shaking, so quickly sitting down on the couch and curling into Scott was far and away the best option.

Scott just wrapped his arms around her and held onto her, tightly. "You are okay," he said very quietly. "Well. You're not okay, but you're on dry land, still breathing, and I swear to God, you don't even have to go near the bathtub for the time being if you don't want to. I will put up with a stinky wife. Manfully, even."

Normally, Jean thought, in that disturbed, detached bit of her brain that was still thinking at all, she'd have hit him for that. Right now, though, she just clung onto him. "There's..." she started, then stopped and started again. "The crazy needs to stop. I can't... I can't think right and there's, there was water everywhere and, I just, I can't, I can't even... I don't know how to..." And the words were just completely not working, so she gave up and buried her face in his shoulder, still shaking.

Scott just stroked her hair and held onto her even tighter, murmuring a string of comforting nothings to her. There really wasn't much to say, after all. Even as he thought that, however, something did occur to him. "We're leaving, remember?" he murmured. "We'll be away on vacation, far away from anything even slightly crazy."

"Yeah, except the bit of the crazy that's me," Jean said, voice muffled by Scott's shoulder. The world was easier to cope with when everything smelled of Scott - he was a very good focus. "Which, let's be frank here, is a pretty big bit. My crazy rivals giant dragons made out of Chinese peasants."

"Yeah, but it's a familiar crazy. I prefer your crazy to giant dragons with acid breath." Scott closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in her familiar scent. No matter how many close calls they had in the field together, he'd never get used to them. Never be able to brush them off.

Possibly it was the closeness, and possibly it was simply because his thoughts echoed her own, in a less disjointed fashion, but that thought made it down the link and through the chaos in her brain and Jean looked up, then leaned over and kissed him. "No more dragons. And no more pirates. Or oceans. Or boats. Or spies. I forbid them all." And then she kissed him again. "Also, your knee is expressly forbidden from going out again," she said after a moment.

"Mmm. I hope it takes you seriously." It wasn't that he minded just sitting here and holding her, but this was more fun.

"Yes," she said. "Both your knee and my crazy need to be less problematic. On the whole." He was right, it was more fun. And also better distraction. And more grounding. And several other things Jean thought of before once again convincing her mind to just shut up and be in the moment. And, of course the moment became several.