Scott and Jean, wee hours of Thursday morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott comes to briefly, frets about his team and the mission, and teases his wife.


It was a very familiar growl that drew him out of the hazy semiconsciousness where he'd been drifting for a while now. A very subdued familiar growl, but the room was so quiet that he could still hear it. "Grumpy," he murmured, realizing that he couldn't move his jaw. "Grr..."

Really, it was only because it was so late that kept Jean from stomping about and throwing things. She didn't really have to worry about waking up most of her charges - that many painkillers and they were (hopefully) dead to the world. Which meant she could give in at least somewhat to her frustration. She'd stolen an extra chair for Scott's room and was using it to prop her legs up as she glared across the room at the coffee cup. She wanted it. She didn't want to move. And her head was pounding so much she couldn't have even tried to levitate it, even though it wouldn't have done any good.

No answer. Had he actually said that aloud? Scott opened his eyes - eye, he only had one eye, and willed it to focus. Ceiling. Infirmary ceiling! Hah. "... Jean?"

It was the combination of the dead quiet in her head (well, aside from the gnomes who'd taken to banging on anvils behind her eyes) and the firm assumption that Scott was out for the count that meant she didn't process that he was actually speaking for a few seconds. Eventually, though, her battered brain caught up on what her ears were telling her and she shifted to look at Scott. "You shouldn't be awake," she told him.

"Shouldn't be growling. Grumpy. Would kiss you but can't move." At least, that was what he intended to say, but it didn't come out sounding quite right, given the lack of jaw movement and the fact that his tongue felt weirdly thick.

"I have no idea what you just said." Jean frowned. It wasn't entirely true - she'd picked up on the word 'grumpy' well enough, and something about a kiss - but regardless, it just made her crankier. "That's not right. Hate this." She dropped her feet off the chair with more of a thump than was necessary and stood up to brush a kiss to Scott's forehead (a proper kiss would hurt him) as she headed to the coffee cup she'd been glaring at earlier.

She was there, but not there. Ah-hah. Now, if someone would get rid of the fuzzy blanket they'd wrapped his thoughts up in, he could figure out what the natural conclusion he'd just almost reached was. "Everyone okay...?" He managed to enunciate that more clearly. "Everyone here?"

"Okay is a matter of opinion," she told him somewhat tartly, swallowing the last of the cold coffee. "But here, yes, and they'll all get better."

"Quiet..." He tried to get his eye to focus. "Like the tsunami." That was what the problem was, he realized. But she was upright, and growling, so it was probably just overstrain. Right?

Tsunami was a fairly easy word to say, even without moving the jaw, and Jean scowled, but nodded. "Much like," she agreed. "Terry was good enough," there was a touch too much snark in that statement to be taken solely at face value, "not to let Mystique provide me with the unconsciousness Jim gave me last time. Probably all for the best, although you couldn't prove it by my headache."

"Mmm... good." Jean and Terry hadn't killed each other and saved Mystique the trouble. Very good, actually. "No killing... everyone's home... cities still there?"

"Yes, yes." That was down right waspish. Jean took a deep breath and let it out, trying to reign in her wild emotions and not really succeeding. "All's well that ends well, I'm sure. Next time I have to land part of a space station, though, I demand help. Nate got help."

"You... two. Always trying to... outdo each other." Her hand was nowhere close to his, damn it. Scott tried to shift a little closer, and winced as he discovered that the floaty feeling only went so far. "Ow. Ribs..."

That got Jean to his side in a flash as she glared down at him. "No. Moving," she said, her voice uncompromising. "You were in bad shape before you stopped breathing and the kids had to give you CPR. Which I haven't forgiven you for yet, by the way."

CPR? Oh, joy. "Mmm... right. Pissy Hungarian. Kept ahead of him for two days, though..." Scott protested, once the immediate urge to try and curl up into a fetal ball had passed. And ah-hah! There was her hand. Scott reached for it. "Have to tell me how... to make it up to you."

Jean let him claim her hand, and hooked one of the two chairs closer with her foot, settling into it with a sigh. "Oh, don't ask now. Right now the answer's probably 'blast my head off' and neither of us really wants that." She leaned her forehead against his bed, looking tired.

"Need bed for two," was Scott's observation. She looked tired. She'd probably been hovering, keeping an eye on him... he wondered if it would do any good to tell her to go to bed. Probably not. To be honest, it wasn't like he really wanted her to go, either. He was allowed to be just a little selfish, wasn't he? The last time he'd talked to her they'd been in the process of falling to earth and while he'd been fairly sure, in Australia, that she wasn't dead, it wasn't like he'd been positive.

"You know, Moira and I actually discussed that a couple times, ages ago," Jean said, not lifting her head. "On the whole, we figured it was incentive for you and Nate to get better faster if we didn't. Plus, it's not like you're in any real shape to cuddle." Which didn't keep her from clinging a little bit to his hand.

He squeezed back. "Don't need incentive," he mumbled. He was tired; it was actually kind of difficult to stay focused. They undoubtedly had him on the very good drugs. It struck him that he could probably go back to sleep, but he couldn't quite banish the lingering anxiety... "Everything okay, really?"

"I," Jean said, her voice deceptively calm and level, not lifting her head from his shoulder, "am going to sedate you if you ask me that again."

"Scary wife," Scott mumbled, and closed his eyes, reassured by the fact that she didn't seem to be going anywhere.