Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ceiling stares down at Scott.

He’s got the duvet stripped back to the empty left side of the bed. The fresh cast hovers insistently in his field of vision where his shin is propped up on a small mountain of pillows. According to Hank, it’s bright red.

Scott resists the urge to scowl.

His fingers beat out a hesitant tattoo against his waistband. By the time he wakes up in the morning it will have been more than seventy-two hours. This is more than enough time for Scott to stop blaming Logan and realize that the accident had been his own fault. Or at least the fault of whomever had decided to put the teachers’ showers directly above the students’ via a flight of stairs.

The Professor, probably. The irony does nothing to soften Scott’s irritation.

He needs to get over it. Scott bites into his lip and twists one set of fingers in the fabric of his sweats. The other hand buries itself in the crumpled duvet.

He misses Jean. This is why a reflex erection tugs infuriatingly at his oily underwear. He wants to shower. He wants to stand up. He wants to not be stuck like this for eight to twelve weeks. He wants to punch Logan without the force of the blow shattering his knuckles. He wants Jean, who had been on a mission for more than a week now, to come back.

The ceiling glares down at him. Scott glares back.

He sucks in a sharp breath. Holds it to the count of five, then exhales. From down the hall, Kurt and Piotr’s politely hushed voices are barely audible. They’d gone to see a movie that evening — the Lord of the Rings, Scott thinks. It’s supposed to be good.

The digital clock at his bedside blares an unkind 11:56 PM at him. He takes another halting breath and prays for relaxation to take him.

Scott had wanted to accompany them. Vaguely, at least, as in the way one wishes to pick up a hobby. He’d read the books as a child.

But there are a number of reasons he couldn’t have attended, of course, aside from his broken foot. The leader of the X-Men should not be unreachable for a number of hours, particularly when he is jointly responsible for the lives of a number of untrained mutant children.

He can’t remember the last time he had been to see a movie.

Scott takes another breath. He waits impatiently for his heartrate to slow.

Everything is fine. Scott does not think about the drunken, rumbling laughter in the shape of Logan’s voice that had spilled from the kitchenette across the hall thirty minutes ago. He does not think about the fact that he is incapacitated and will be for the next eight weeks. He does not think about the fact that no one — not even Ororo, who Scott is fully certain had been giggling along with Logan, albeit much more quietly — other than him is responsible enough to look after the X-men. And does not linger on how wasteful it is to have broken his foot not in the midst of battle but while tripping down the stairs. And he certainly does not linger on his persistent erection, now uncomfortably wedged in the crease between his hip and thigh.

With a huff, Scott shoves down the waistband of his sweats.

He spits in his hand. The lube is completely inaccessible, buried in a box under the bed. Viscous saliva floods the crevice of his palm. He’s dehydrated. He will need to drink some water after this.

Teeth clenched, Scott’s eyes squeeze shut just as tightly as his hand squeezes around his cock. Unbidden pleasure burns through his limbs. He sets a staccato pace and thinks of nothing.

The sound of his own breath echoes. The clock hums. Down the hall, Kurt laughs. Scott’s wrist starts to cramp. He tenses the muscles in the pit of his stomach and tells himself that he’s close.

Seconds tick by. Spit dries.

Scott is not close.

Hot, frustrated air exits his nostrils. In an ideal world, Scott would prefer to finish quickly, wipe himself off, remain unbothered by the tacky sensation of his skin, and wake up early the next morning. He would walk down the hall to the kitchen, make himself a cup of coffee, and carry out his routine as closely as possible with a hulking chunk of plaster strapped to the end of his leg.

Scott spits in his hand again. His toes curl with displeasure. As more and more seconds pass with Scott trying and failing to appease his insistent erection, the more he understands this sequence of events will not come to pass.

He opens his eyes. Through a haze of red, the ceiling projects flat superiority.

Reluctantly, Scott takes his hand off his dick. He lays his palms flat on the mattress. The nape of his neck sinks into his pillow. The muscles layered over his ribs cry out in protest as he takes a slow, deep breath.

Scott has never been fond of his sexuality. This is separate from his biology, which he adequately tolerates. A morning erection or nocturnal emission isn’t exactly useful, but by the age these phenomena had begun to truly bother Scott, he had been old enough to understand them as the experiential shape of the urge to procreate. He would like to have children someday.

But sexuality is something different. Scott can tolerate a physical inconvenience. An intrusive erection is finite. It is controllable. But the mental aspects which accompany sexuality — a series of unwanted thoughts, ideas, and feelings — have left Scott wanting to tear his own skin off more often than not.

In the depths of his mind, Scott hesitates in front of the door behind which those thoughts stay firmly imprisoned. There are plenty of words Scott could use to describe these thoughts, all of which are negative. Disgusting is the first which comes to mind, followed quickly by annoying.

Jean would suggest he use more gentle words, he knows. Scott doesn’t usually entertain this part of himself without her guiding presence in his mind.

But Scott needs to sleep. With a sigh, he turns the knob.

The rasp of the sheets against Scott’s skin, the buzz of his alarm clock, and the sour smell of his own sweat fade into the background. He flinches in anticipation of whatever unpredictable ideas might leap to bombard him. When nothing emerges, he instead reaches for one of his favorite memories.

Locks of red hair cascade down Jean’s shoulders. She lies naked and prone at the foot of their bed. She had undressed while Scott was in the shower. He recalls pausing, staring at her for a long moment before he had taken any enjoyment in the plump curve of her butt or the playful quirk of her lips.

Scott’s dick throbs.

He spits into his hand again. Eyes screwed shut, a few heavy drops of saliva dribble down his chin. He groans in frustration.

Enough to make your day better? she had asked.

It had. Scott cannot even recall what had upset him. His cock throbs as he once again begins to stroke himself.

Most likely, it had been some incident with Logan. Plenty of things get under Scott’s skin, but very few irritate him as consistently as Logan. Jean had quirked her eyebrows, waiting for Scott to nod before beckoning him closer with one delicately crooked finger. The incidents are nearly innumerable; only three days prior, when Scott had been covering one of Jean’s classes, Logan had sauntered into the classroom and watched, waiting for Scott to fumble his words for no other reason than to relish in the opportunity to question Scott’s authority —

With a grunt, Scott cuts off his own train of thought.

He returns his thoughts to Jean. His pulse races for the bottom-heavy slope of her breasts as she had turned onto her back and the sluice of red cascading down her collarbone, over the duvet, between her thighs, its motion not unlike the water purling over the broad shoulders drawing Scott’s gaze as he attempts to strip the anger from his tone —

Slick with precum, Scott’s dick bucks against his palm.

Jean. The swell of her breasts under Scott’s hands, the tickle of her nipple against his palm. Her taut stomach gives way to Scott’s prowling fingers which peruse first her hips, her thighs, and the coarse hair crowning her mound before finally pouncing between her legs in much the same predacious pathway his eyes had taken in the showers as he had attempted to ignore Logan’s dismissive scoff and rolled eyes —

Scott strokes faster. Teeth clenched, he knows he needs to let this go.

He thinks about Jean around his fingers. He thinks about the nub of her clit squirming beneath his digits, her folds swallowing him up, her head tossed back against the sheets. Logan had rolled his head back too, in a full-body laugh levied in Scott’s direction. Whip-quick, his gaze had flicked down Scott’s body and back to his face. The same action, executed in mirror, left the image of Logan’s thick and heavy dick burned into the backs of Scott’s retinas.

Sweat rolls down Scott’s forehead.

He tries to think about fingering Jean, fingering Jean, fingering Jean, the words beating against his brain in time with the motion of his fist even as the memory refuses to reappear. His dick drools. The head is slick against his palm. Logan had tilted his head back, scoffed, and growled, whatever you say, bub.

He had been so much bigger than Scott.

Scott’s toes curl. The pain of the swelling radiates up his right leg.

Jean. Jean. Jean. Scott is thinking about Jean. Her lips. She’s attracted to Logan. She had shown Scott, in the depths of his mind, trying to impart upon him that the existence of physical attraction to another person does not negate her love for Scott. But Logan’s dick had hung heavy between his thighs, and he had seen how small Scott was in comparison, and he had laughed.

Humiliation burns in Scott’s throat. His dick kicks and spits in his palm.

Scott can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Jean is attracted to Logan. There’s nothing even remotely desirable about the man besides his musculature. The answer to this implied question comes to Scott as easily as breathing: the triangular taper of his torso, the thickly-curled body hair, the low rasp of his voice, the predatory spark in his eye, the massive weapon hanging between his thighs —

Heart racing, thoughts throbbing, dick thrashing, Scott tries to stop. He can’t. Compulsive, the image of Logan’s cock flashes in red behind Scott’s eyelids. The phantom sensation of its weight, unfamiliar stretch of its foreskin, the musk of it, the musk, and Scott —

His hips buck up into his own hand as he cums.

Scott has always had a fraught relationship with perfection.

He is aware that perfection does not exist. Or, if it does exist, it is not something any normal person can obtain. Everyone has flaws — some more than their fair share.

But there is still the possibility of approaching perfection.

Scott has structured his life around chasing this ideal. As a teen, he had wanted to live up to Professor Xavier’s vision of the X-Men as a virtuous beacon of mutantkind.

He had, of course, eventually realized that this version of perfection is not attainable. As a young adult, Scott’s drive had morphed into a desire to live up to his own near-perfect vision of himself. He had thought, with enough effort and control, he could grow into exactly the person he had wanted to be. He could become a calm and effective leader: the kind of person who could take over for the Professor, who could be worthy of being Jean’s life partner, who could be respected even by mutants who had never met him.

Now, at twenty-eight, Scott no longer knows exactly what he is chasing.

He stares down at the chessboard. He had been trying to solve this puzzle for at least a half hour now. A brutal, throbbing headache pulses in the nape of his neck. He needs to sit up, to stretch, to relieve his searing bladder. He can’t make himself. He chews on his thumbnail.

Scott is an adult now. Time continues to pass. And the more deeply he verges into adulthood, the more it sinks in that despite his best efforts he’s nowhere near the person he needs to be.

The sky is dark. The mansion lies quiet. Logan snores across the hall. He had probably passed out drinking.

Alcoholism is only one of Logan’s many flaws.

Scott’s fingers ball into fists. He sits in the dark. His ruby quartz visor leaves him nearly blind.

These days, it feels less like Scott is chasing perfection and more like he is trying to excise his defects. Scott banishes them to the closets of his mind and locks the doors behind. He twists the tourniquet, halts the blood flow, and waits for the flesh to die. More than once, he has asked Jean to snip the withered bloom of his mind at the stem. It is only natural for a gardener to prune unruly weeds.

She won’t do it anymore. It is unethical, apparently.

Scott wishes she would. He stares down at the board, fingertips digging into his temples. Anxiety bears down on him. His muscles tense in protest.

The grim reality is that Scott isn’t supposed to do things like this.

People like Scott don’t stay up until 4 AM failing to solve chess puzzles. They don’t give in to the urge to masturbate after a week without sex. They don’t call their fiance in the middle of the night in a panic over problems that cannot be fixed.

Scott groans. Fingers twisted up in his hair, he stares down at the chessboard. White to move, mate in three. He’s already ruled out the queen. His chest rises and falls as he mentally manipulates the rook, inching further and further down the board in his mind’s eye.

He should not have called Jean. The decision had been so idiotic Scott struggles to conceptualize the action as one he had actually taken and not a strangely vivid nightmare. More than two hours have passed and he can still hear her weary voice echoing through his mind. She had panicked. What else could she do? Scott had begged her to look at his mind as soon as she was back, informed her that something was wrong with him, and when she had asked him to go to the Professor about it, Scott had only replied that it was private.

Logan snores. Scott grits his teeth.

Something is wrong.

There is something foreign within him. Something has been transplanted into the depths of his psyche. There is no other possibility. Those thoughts had not felt like his. People like Scott don’t think about people other than their fiances when masturbating. People like Scott don’t masturbate in the first place. They certainly don’t masturbate to thoughts of other men. And absolutely not to men like Logan.

It cannot be the rook. Scott moves on to the bishop, approaching the problem obliquely. Her felted foot beats a steady tattoo against the board as Scott fingers her: bishop to C2, D3, E4. He pleads for the board to offer him the relief of its surrender.

The possibilities remain frustratingly open.

There is a relief in surrendering his mind to Jean. Her strange metaphysical presence had been ubiquitous in the periphery of his mind for as long as he can remember. More than fifteen years passed, Scott still recalls first experiencing the din of her, trailing timidly behind the Professor’s chair as they had stepped into her parents’ house. There is an intimacy in allowing her to plunder him, a threat come to delicious fruition. It is correct. The absence of her leaves him aching.

An owl hoots. Scott’s cast scrapes against the carpet. He should elevate it.

It must have been an accident. This is what Scott has decided. He thumbs the Queen, ridges of her crown warping his fingerprints.

Jean spends more time walking the corridors of Scott’s mind than anyone. She caresses the walls, labels the doors, oils the hinges. Her fingerprints are smudged on the columns, scattered along the rafters, even imprinted on the foundation. She slips into parts of Scott’s mind he barely knows himself. It’s not unthinkable that she could have left behind a part of herself. Perhaps it’s even to be expected.

Scott breathes. He had been methodical. The most likely solution is obvious. He only wishes that the part of herself she had left behind wasn’t —

Air catches in Logan’s throat. His snore echoes noisily down the halls.

Sometimes, Scott wonders if perfection is truly impossible, or if he was simply not built to attain it.

“I said I was fine.”

The door slams shut behind Scott. He had tried to push it shut with one of his crutches only to have it whipped about by Jean’s firm telepathic grip. The combination of both forces resulted in a loud bang.

Scott scowls.

“Except calling in the middle of the night to ask me to look at your brain is very obviously not fine.” Standing in the middle of their room, Jean crosses her arms.

Scott’s own remain firmly at his sides. The room is a mess. Sheets lie crumpled at the foot of the bed, clutter scattered across the bedside table, flowers wilted in the vase. Scott could have cleared the dead leaves away. Instead, he had covered them with his chessboard.

“Scott.” His gaze snaps up to Jean’s. Dread fills him. “What’s wrong?”

Gaze fixed on the carpet, Scott hobbles to the chair. In the seven minutes between Kurt shouting through the door that Jean had returned and her arriving at the building, Scott had embarrassingly only made it down the hall and into the mezzanine, overlooking the foyer.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice raising in volume. “What are you going to do if someone gets hurt because you left? I told you I was fine, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t take me — “

“Scott Summers.” Hand on her hips, Jean glares down at him. “Stop yelling at me.”

Scott’s lips snap shut. Jean taps her foot, impatient.

His anger continues to disturb the waters of his mind. The words he needs to make her understand how inappropriate her choice had been sit obscured at the bottom of the river.

Scott can’t look at her. Moments pass, punctuated by the pointed toe of Jean’s heel ravaging the carpet. She knocks gently at the door of Scott’s mind.

Jean’s presence washes over him: head plunged beneath the waterline, anger swept downstream, back flush against the riverbed.

“Just let me see.”

Scott’s fingers twist in the duvet.

The procedure is quick.

Jean pulls Scott into the dingy room that contains his most depraved thoughts. Radiating through tempered glass, soft light illuminates the ceiling of his and Jean’s room. The down duvet fills Scott’s palms. But in the basement of his consciousness, it’s Jean’s hand in his under the assault of a bare bulb.

Scott’s swollen heart chokes him off.

Ill-formed thoughts and feelings solidify under the pressure of Jean’s psychic touch. Dust consolidates into knick-knacks, smoke into beaten-up books, dirt into banker’s boxes. Scott’s desires are scattered in cock-eyed lines across wire shelves and strewn about the unfinished floors.

He hates accompanying Jean into his own mind. There is no pleasure in seeing how barren some parts of him are.

Embarrassed, Scott turns to his boots. A set of vacant, black-lined eyes stare back at him. They are printed on an issue of Penthouse. The soft curve of her breast peeks out from behind a black leather jacket. Her hair is red. Arousal coils in the pit of Scott’s stomach.

The memory comes to him in vivid color. He is crouching on the shag carpet of his parents’ bedroom, the scent of stale nicotine flooding his sinuses. Glossy paper crinkles beneath his shaking fingers. Scott is young enough that he does not know what to do with the savage, uncontrolled need that thrashes in the pit of his stomach. He is young enough to see the world in more than shades of red. The date printed on the cover sharpens into JAN 1979.

With a scowl, Scott kicks the magazine under the nearest shelf.

He likes Jean. He is attracted to Jean.

Even so, Scott tries to ignore her rummaging. She attends to each of his pieces with a touch equally as tender as it is uncomfortable. But when Jean grasps her own form in miniature, red nails buttoned around her own red figurine, Scott cannot hold back his reaction. He exhales slowly, tension wavering in the walls. The memory of her hourglass hips beneath his palms swells to the forefront of his mind.

Her approach is painfully clinical. Phantom sensations plague him: the wet warmth of her folds against his lips, fingers scrabbling desperately at the tile as he frantically tugs at himself in the shower, Ororo’s soft breasts pressed against his back as she tries to squeeze past him sending inappropriate arousal scuttling about in the pits of him, his fingers knotted in Jean’s hair as he pushes her face-down into the mattress and chooses not to make love to her but fuck her instead —

Inconsequential, Jean brushes past these thoughts. A sour taste lingers in the back of his mouth as his self-concept begins to curdle. Jean reaches upwards, sliding a banker’s box off the topmost rack.

The lid comes off easily.

The outpouring of embarrassment, shame, and guilt is anything but.

Briefly, chaos takes the wheel. A stampede of untamed thoughts, feelings, and memories buck against Jean’s attempts to corral them. Scott identifies the remnants of unwelcome teenaged erections, his hips humping pathetically down into the mattress as he undresses Jean in his mind, his dick a miniature next to Logan’s, the bittersweet taste of Jean’s sweat on his tongue, Jean bent over for him, Logan’s heavy weight crushing him, his hand pushing Jean’s face into the mattress while his hips pound erratically into her, Piotr’s massive hand on his shoulder, Jean stripping for him, bulging muscles to accompany the booming voice asking if he needs to be spotted —

“Scott? Are you okay?”

His eyes open. Above, brown eyes bore into him. Across, Jean’s irises are green. The change in perspective leaves him nauseated.

“I’m fine,” he croaks.

Jean bites her lip. She doesn’t look at him when she apologizes. Quiet and unassuming, the word sorry leaves her lips. Scott watches as she carefully tames and places each of Scott’s private humiliations back into their box, save for a miniature of Logan which crumbles to dust beneath her fingers.

Scott breathes a sigh of relief.

And then Jean holds up a single, silver dumbbell. “This is yours?” she asks.

The images are ignorable. The danger room, the gym, the showers. Jean can see them, too. In perfect opposition to one another, they watch in tandem as Hank lifts the Professor’s solid oak desk in a single hand.

Scott sweats. “No.”

Silently, Jean stares at him. “It’s not mine.”

Logan had been hers. Scott’s relief is muted beneath another wave of anxiety. He shakes his head no, the gesture equal parts request and command.

Jean turns away. Scott waits.

Dust piles at her feet.

They don’t talk about it.

For a long time, Scott lies spread-eagled on their bed and stews in his own self-hatred. His shins hang off the foot. The only sound which breaks the silence is the rasp of Jean’s fingers running through her own hair.

She seems guilty more than anything else. The minutes are punctuated by sighs and nervous hand-wringing. All emotion drains from Scott, leaving him empty. He feels like a clogged sink that finally had its garbage disposal run.

Scott doesn’t like men. It had been an accident. When considering what a psychic accident might look like, Scott should really count himself lucky.

He doesn’t feel lucky.

Neither Scott nor Jean are particularly creative in bed.

Illuminated by only the dim light of the bedside lamp, Jean traces out the pronounced curve of his pectoral muscles. Her breasts sway as she rocks her hips. Scott grips her gently by the waist.

“You’re gonna get a little softer, aren’t you?” Smiling, Jean thumbs at his nipples. For a moment, Scott is fully convinced she is speaking about his penis. “Resting for the next couple of months.”

This is their usual position. Jean perched on Scott’s lap, sliding her hips back and forth rather than up and down. The pace is steady, without rush. The antithesis of desperation, their sex is accurately characterized as an inevitable crawl towards orgasm.

“Maybe,” Scott says. “I can still work out.”

His head grinds against that little ridged spot inside of her. The sensation is so intense it could almost be called unpleasant. Missionary is even more intense.

“Did you run that by Hank?”

Scott shrugs.

Narrow palms slide along the arch of Jean’s lower back before returning to her hips. He tightens his grip, steadying her as he rolls his hips forward, the scratchy material of his cast scraping noisily against the sheets.

“Hey. Relax.” Jean stops. She touches Scott’s face. “Let me. Your leg.”

Their first time had been in the missionary position, obviously. Scott had experienced a number of difficulties with this. They had quickly shifted to this position as the default. It had taken a few months after that for Jean to finally let Scott know that doing all the work became tiring after a while.

At the time, Scott had wished she’d told him the first time. And he wishes he didn’t have to be told when the rule no longer applied.

“It’s fine,” he says.

It is not fine. But he allows Jean to become the executioner of their sex without fuss.

She increases the pace. The movement is mechanical, flesh on flesh. Jean’s hair cascades down her shoulders in shades of true red. She smiles at him.

“Feels good?”

Scott nods. He aches within the vacuum of his own thoughts, unsure how or if to inform Jean of the contrary. The lack of friction between their minds reduces the physical act to just that. She had messed up his brain, and now she is trying to be nice.

Thunderous guilt rolls through him. Fingertips of rain tap on their window.

“Sorry,” Jean says again.

“Stop apologizing.” The straps of Scott’s ruby quartz visor dig into the back of his head.

“I fucked up your brain.” Jean bites into her lip.

“And you fixed it.” Scott doesn’t say anything about how she abandoned the mission. She is rational. She is capable of understanding the consequences of her own actions. “So it’s fine.”

Jean nods. Scott bends his knees and slowly, gently starts to rock into her. Jean’s breasts bounce. Her eyes slide shut and a single bead of sweat rolls down her temple.

“I’m still sorry.” She braces her palms on Scott’s chest, locking her elbows as Scott begins to thrust. “I freaked you out.”

“I wasn’t.” Her attraction to Logan isn’t a secret. Scott has known for many years. And while Jean has always insisted that her feelings are immutable, Scott suspects she experiences some guilt over the situation. Perhaps this is why she continues to apologize.

“You were weird at Logan over dinner.”

She isn’t reading his mind. Scott knows this because she does not react to the way his rhythm falters.

“I wasn’t.” Scott does not want to talk about Logan during sex. He does not say this. “He wasn’t even at dinner.”

Logan had only leaned over Scott, snatching a number of chicken legs from the table before stalking out of the room. He hadn’t said a word. If Scott were forced to make a guess, he would suggest that Logan had taken his meat out onto the lawn and torn into it like a feral animal. Scott imagines him snarling, growling, and thrashing his head around like a dog. Such behavior would not go over well at the dinner table.

The image is unarousing. Scott sighs in relief.

“I know.” Jean squeezes around him. The expression written in the curve of her lips is unreadable. “You were still weird about him.”

Maybe Scott had been. He is often unaware of his own facial expressions.

“I’m fine.”

Scott doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. He wants Jean’s mind to brush against his. He wants her to understand him without words. He wants to feel her push into him, wash away his anxiety, breathe heat and light into the neglected corners of his mind from basement to attic. Under normal circumstances, she already would have.

“It’s okay if you’re not.” Jean combs hair back from his forehead. The motion is tender. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time.”

Unwelcome, Scott recalls his own fantasized image of Jean on her hands and knees. One hand is knotted in her hair, pushing her face-down into the mattress. The other digs into her hip, squeezing tightly. Jean is moaning, and Scott is fucking her. The motion of his hips is rough, uninhibited, and he’s drenched in sweat and his jaw is clenched and he leans down to breathe in the scent of her, to grab at her breast.

Jean cocks her head. Scott’s cheeks burn.

“I’m never perfect.”

They’ve never done it like that. It would be demeaning. The only point would be for Scott to feel good, and that’s not what sex is about. Scott loves her. He respects her. He would never take advantage of her, and Jean —

“You don’t have to be.”

She doesn’t roll her eyes. That’s how Scott knows she isn’t reading his mind.

The absence is filled by gnawing distress. Scott’s heart races. His toes curl. Anxiety simmers in the pit of his stomach. Jean is beautiful. Scott touches her hips, her back, her thighs, and even manages to squeeze her breasts from that awkward angle. Jean returns the gesture in kind, dragging dull fingernails down the length of Scott’s neck and teasing his nipples. She circles her hips in those tight, sharp movements that drive Scott crazy.

She’s beautiful, and Scott is attracted to her. He thinks about eating her out. He thinks about how it feels to have her squeeze around him, and to finish inside of her. With a condom, of course — they want kids eventually, but not before they’re married. He moans, soft and thready, just the way he knows Jean likes. He makes a legitimate effort. He tries.

But Scott is not close.

He knows that, more often than he’d like, sex doesn’t feel good until Jean slips into his mind. He licks his lips.

“Please.” Embarrassment burns in Scott’s veins. “Come inside.”

All at once, Jean’s movements stop. “Scott,” she says, and the disappointment in her tone leaves Scott grinding his teeth. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“It was an accident.”

“Which means I could do it again.“

“So you could fix it again.”

Jean glares at him. “Do I need to remind you that you called me — “

“Only because I didn’t know what.” Scott stops himself. Jean’s waist is soft in his palms. “Why.”

She sighs.

“If it happened again, I’d know what was happening. And I’d be fine. I was fine.”

Scott is unsure whether that statement is entirely accurate. It would be at least unpleasant and at worst distracting. But both of those outcomes are tolerable.

Jean still looks hesitant.

“It’s not like you’re accidentally going to lobotomize me, Jean.”

She sighs. Hesitance is scribbled in her eyebrows. Scott’s grip on her tightens, Jean’s skin cratered by his fingertips. Taking a deep breath, Scott pulls back.

“Please?” he asks. Intimacy, embarrassment, and shame burn slowly down his limbs. His cock throbs inside of Jean. “I need you.”

Jean’s expression is pure pity. Self-hatred sours his mouth.

But Jean still leans down, crowding Scott against the mattress. Her elbows bracket his head. Her breasts flatten against his bare chest. Her forehead kisses his.

“Love you.”

In a wave, Jean's lips roll over his. Her presence floods the corridors of his mind.

Summery gales swing doors on their hinges and flame-crested sconces roar in reception as the curling eddy of their kiss deepens. A loyal dog, Scott’s mind greets hers in slavering joy. His shoulders sag in relief.

Jean tightens around him. “Good boy.”

Scott’s only response is to clutch at her body, soft flesh and knotted vertebrae. He doesn’t need to open his eyes. Jean’s mischievous grin is imprinted onto his soul.

Her hips rock into him. Scott matches her slow, easy pace. She kisses the column of his neck. Scott’s skin breaks out in goosebumps. A wave of Jean’s hand leaves the door to the basement creaking on rusty hinges. Jean pulls him down. Scott resists.

His mouth is hot against hers. Saliva coats his lips. He can feel the burn of his stubble against Jean’s cheeks. “More.”

Scott claws at her. Nails race down her back, the resulting pain rattling vicariously down Scott’s spine. He needs more of her. He needs her to fill him up, to scrub him clean, to cast heat and light into the barren hallways that form him in network. Desperate, he couldn’t stop himself from fucking up into her even if he wanted to.

So needy. The words may be spoken aloud or resound only within Scott’s mind. In the moment, he doesn’t care which.

Jean’s back arches beneath his fingers. She bites at his chest, fingers tracing out his shoulders. Tongue and teeth form a whirlpool on his nipple, a swaddle of amusement and arousal.

There’s something in how calm, collected Scott falls apart in her hands. She loves it. Scott loves it. Loves the way she feels, soft thighs surging against his muscled hips, being inside of her, inside of him, Scott throbbing and spitting as he clings to Jean, pulling, tugging, prying.

“No.”

Scott’s eyes fly open. He stares down at himself, red cheeks and parted lips. His own relief, his own lack of control, washes over him in secondhand. Jean slips further into him, the delineations between them blurring. He feels Jean sink into the paint, the drywall, disappearing amongst beams and studs. The sensation of her walls around him dulls, whitewater bob of his dick calming to nothing but a burble.

“Jean.” Scott’s impending orgasm fades. Frustration thunders through him. “Let me cum.”

There’s no self-consciousness, no strategy, no stress. Thoughts, neurons, and muscles knit a cord of need. Jean controls him like a marionette on a string.

She shakes her head. Fingertips leave indents on Jean’s thighs. Scott should stop.

“No.” It would be wild if Jean weren’t holding the reins. “Just a little bit longer.”

He doesn’t stop. Dull, neatly-trimmed nails scrape slowly down her thighs. Red lines flare and fade in full-color contrast. He throbs, rocking shallowly up into her. He’s right on the edge.

Jean’s hand combs through his hair. She kisses his forehead. “Good boy.”

In a disorienting cacophony of motion, the back of Scott’s head hits the mattress. The same force that holds his orgasm at a simmer rips the pillows out from beneath him. She slides off him, leaving his dick to tremble on his stomach in its latex cage. Her folds flood Scott’s mouth.

With Jean perched atop him, her thighs forming brackets around Scott’s head, he’s reminded of the ever-present imbalance between them. She could stop his heart, scramble his brainstem, lock out his brain’s connection to his muscles and throw away the key.

In contrast, Scott has no edge. The blade of his tongue lays obediently upon his lower lip. Jean grinds against him, a grin slicked across her own. His fingers scale her sides. Touch yourself. Her voice echoes through the hallways of his mind.

Scott’s hand moves on its own. Latex beneath his palm, pleasure coiling into painful knots in the pit of his gut. Psychic fingers toy with Scott’s brainstem. Fire burns in the folds of his brain while Jean’s grind against his lips. She keeps him docile.

Scott loves it.

He’s completely powerless in her grasp. It should terrify him. It does, sometimes, but more often than no —

Please, Scott begs.

Denial is the only response. Wordless, its form is nearly indistinguishable from his own internal voice. A few minutes ago, it hadn’t been a good idea to dive into Scott’s mind. Now, it feels like she’s always been a part of it. She sees everything that Scott is, was, could be. She drifts down his halls as a ghost, flipping off the lights in the attic, meandering into the basement, sinking into his very foundations.

Each attempt Scott makes to pin her, she slips from his grasp.

She sees everything he is. Scott sees nothing.

Her clit throbs on his tongue. Scott is grateful for these moments wherein he is allowed to lose himself. One hand tugs frantically at his dick while the other pulls her in, begging for more.

“Shh.” Fingers comb through his hair. Jean’s arousal scorches him, hot on his tongue. “Just wait.”

Scott can’t. He hears himself whine. Feels his own tongue jerk up and down at the discoordinated pace set by his hand. Hears Jean moan, the sound swelling to fill the halls of his mind, and he pulls and pries and presses in an onslaught borne of a determination to see more of her.

This is always how it is: Jean sees Scott, and Scott is blind.

But in that particular moment, Jean trembles. Her thighs clench at Scott’s head as she cums into his mouth. Determined, Scott yanks at her one last time, and Jean —

Jean stumbles.

Jean’s orgasm rips through Scott’s body. Fingers, biceps, thighs, and stomach tremble, then spasm. The dual sensation of his own hair both between fingers and clinging painfully to his scalp leaves Scott reeling. Rolling thunder followed by lightning, Scott’s awareness is lost in the tempest of Jean’s pleasure.

Images flash in the eye of her storm. Scott, on his knees. Scott, tears embossed on blotchy red cheeks. Scott, throbbing beneath the commanding press of Jean’s bare foot. Scott, naked chest pressed against Logan’s, lips interlocked, Logan’s unkempt beard scratching at Scott’s chin and cheeks, slick cocks rutting against one another between a cage of sharp hipbones —

Scott’s orgasm is sharp, unyielding, and violent.

Jean’s realization — embarrassment, fear, panic — hits like a brick to the face. She thinks about Cairo.

And then, Scott is alone.

Charles always takes a great deal of time to outline the setting when telling this story.

There is the dry heat, the tacky lacquer of the table, and the lopsided creak of the ceiling fan above. The encounter had occurred years before he had lost the use of his legs, and although he never likes to address this directly, he never fails to incorporate some detail to this effect in the setup. Among various retellings he has sauntered into the bar, nervously tapped his foot, or tipped over the uneven floorboards. Farouk, leering at him from across the room, is such a given his presence comes almost as an afterthought.

And then follows the projection of the the Professor’s astral form, the shifting and twisting of his enemy’s consciousness, the Professor narrowing his mind into a sharp point, and the final launching of his deadly attack. This is the meat and potatoes of the narrative: the supposed reason he had chosen to form the X-Men in the first place, although it’s obvious that there had been many factors which contributed to this decision.

Scott knows this because Jean knows this.

Inspiration had never been among the emotions Jean had experienced upon hearing this story. The sheer number of times the story had been told and retold in her presence is what makes it stick in her mind. The lesson is sound regardless. Indeed, a solid defence may be more advantageous than an overwhelming offense.

This is the story Charles had told when he had first instructed her in shielding her mind.

This is, subsequently, what she thinks of whenever she pushes unwelcome invaders from her mind.

Scott stares up at the ceiling.

“So,” Jean says. “I assume you’re not going to break up with me.”

The ceiling stares down at Scott. A long silence follows.

“What?” Scott asks.

Beside him, Jean’s fingers are interlocked with his. His penis sits flaccid on his stomach. Ejaculate leaks slowly from the condom.

Behind Scott’s eyelids, Logan’s lips are interlocked with his. He processes this information slowly, assessing both its placement in the chaotic sequence and the atmosphere which begins to dissipate at its edges. It had been Jean’s thought. Jean’s fantasy, perhaps.

Scott is not sure how long the silence has continued for. His mind is numb and overfull.

“Oh.” The puzzle pieces fall into place as Scott speaks. A groan leaves Jean’s lips. She likes the idea of him and Logan — together. “You should’ve just told me.”

Jean snorts. It’s an ugly sound. “Yeah, and say what? Sorry you freaked out, Scott, but don’t worry. I just violated your mind because the idea of you being bisexual turns me on.”

The idea fills Scott with disgust.

This realization is comforting. Jean really had fixed him.

Slowly, Scott turns onto his side. “It’s fine. I’m not mad.”

Lips pursed and eyes closed, Jean’s unreadable expression is cast in shades of red.

“It was an accident,” he continues.

Scott contemplates the image again. He thinks about Logan’s cock dangling between his legs, thick veins creeping down the side, hairy testicles suctioned to his thighs. Scott breathes deeply and regularly. He does not stir. Arousal does not coil in the pit of his stomach.

Scott is not gay.

“And you fixed it,” Scott points out. He had already known this, but he hopes the words will be a comfort to Jean, who breathes slowly next to him with lips pursed in an expression most closely resembling misery. “So it’s fine.”

He watches her breathe. Round breasts rise and fall. Her eyes flick open, slowly refocusing on Scott. He feels nothing but exhaustion.

“Okay,” Jean says. Her gaze darts across Scott’s face. “Alright.”

Scott doesn’t respond. Jean’s shoulders curl, one hand pillowing the side of her head. She stares at him. Moments creak by. The moon, rising, escapes its own bisection by the decorative grilles criss-crossing their windowpane. There is semen on Scott’s stomach. He wishes to move, but he does not.

“Do you…” Jean trails off. Her gaze drifts down to Scott’s neck before returning to her own impenetrable red reflection. “Do you wanna have sex. Differently?”

Scott stares at her. Jean stares back. His calm is replaced by a whirlwind of confusion.

“No,” Scott says, firmly. He’s not gay. He doesn’t want to have sex with Logan, or think about having sex with Logan, and there is no universe in which he is — in which he wants to — “Absolutely not. No.”

Jean’s lips remain pursed. Scott swallows around the thick knot in his throat.

“I love you,” he asserts.

The words are simple. Regardless, they sit heavy on Scott’s tongue. The surface of his palm is sweaty against Jean’s.

She nods. “Okay.”

Silently, she rolls out of bed. The shower sputters to life, bathroom door left open in invitation. Wanting to delay the uncomfortable sensation of peeling the condom off, Scott doesn’t follow her until steam begins to plume across the ceiling of their bedroom.

In the shower, Jean attempts to smile at him. Scott doesn’t return the favor. Damp hair clings to her shoulder blades. Droplets of water rebound off the telekinetic shield wrapped transparent around Scott’s cast.

It isn’t until much later, after Jean has already fallen asleep with her arms twisted possessively around him, that Scott realizes she had never said I love you back.

Chapter Text

“I’m just saying that — I don’t know why you have to encourage him.”

Scott’s crutches creak as he hobbles through the doorway. From the other side of their room, Jean promptly slams the door behind him. Scott bites back his annoyance.

“I’m not encouraging anything.”

Jean speaks into the window. Her arms are crossed defensively over her chest. When Scott sets his crutches down, the nearby chair yanks itself out from under the table. Scott glares.

She definitely had been.

“I wasn’t.”

Scott stares at his own hands, limp between his knees. “Stop reading my thoughts.”

The angle of Jean’s shoulders sharpens. She breathes in. “Sorry.”

Scott peels away his ruby quartz visor. He rubs at the pressure lines left bracketing his eyes. Cyan blooms on black as fingertips dig into his tear ducts.

Jean had been encouraging it. The scene plays out in his mind’s eye: Jean leans against the wall, head tilted demurely to the side. Logan grins at her while he makes some snide little comment — Coulda done that myself, don’t need no know-it-all; he as bossy in bed as he is on the battlefield?; let me know if you need some company while boy scout’s outta commission. Then Jean is rolling her eyes but not bothering to hide her little smile. She glares at Scott when he announces the end of the break.

It hadn't been pointed. Scott hadn’t even been looking at them.

The heavy plastic frame of his visor creaks as he slides it back on. Embossed on the setting sun, Jean observes him from the window. She asks, “Are you ready to talk?”

The tone is expectant, like Scott is a poorly-behaved child. He scowls. She isn’t ready to talk.

It’s always like this. Scott knows what he saw. He knows what Jean feels. Not in the same way that she understands him, but enough.

“I’m not stupid.” Jaw clenched, Scott glares at her.

Jean glares back. “I don’t think you are.”

She taps her foot anxiously. Her arms are crossed under her breasts just as they had been with Logan. The gesture no longer feels flirtatious. It's something about the cleavage.

He swallows. “It’s fine.”

They had managed to contain this fight through the second half of Scott’s class, a meeting with the Professor, and the painfully slow journey up the stairs. Scott could contain it longer if need be. In fact, Scott is sure he could shove his indignation and resentment into a closet in the back of his mind and never touch them again. It would not be the first time.

Jean scowls at him. She is always the one who wants the fight. “Clearly, it’s not. Because — “

Scott attempts to interrupt her. “We’ve had this fight a million times before, can we just — “

Jean ignores him. “ — if it were fine, you wouldn’t have felt the need to fucking dig at me the whole walk up — “

“Don’t swear at me.”

The conversation grinds to a halt. An expression shy of rage skims across Jean’s brow. She turns on her heel and stares out the window again, anger radiating from the tense line of her shoulders.

Scott boils. If she doesn’t want to talk, she should just keep her mouth shut.

Jean does keep her mouth shut. Lips pressed into a thin line, Scott tracks the movements of her translucent reflection and allows his resentment to boil. Scott is the one who works to keep them from fighting. As much as Jean wants to act as if her dragging out these little disagreements is the only thing keeping their relationship together, Scott knows the truth. He is the mature one.

He squeezes the backs of his palms between his knees and seethes.

He doesn’t know why Jean puts up with him. He doesn’t know why Jean likes him. He disappears for days or weeks or months only to reappear with that pathetic, broken look in his eyes. He has no responsibility or maturity or care for anyone other than himself. And each time he bothers to stick around, all he does is flirt with Jean and quip at Scott for being unbearably straight-laced or a rule-follower, a goody two-shoes or something equally as ridiculous. The brute can’t tolerate the expectation of simple respect for authority and has decided to make this a problem for not only himself but everyone else.

Now, Scott is the one scowling. “I don’t understand why you’re attracted to him.”

The balled muscle at the corner of Jean’s jaw spasms.

It’s not a secret. Scott had known since Logan first hobbled into their lives a few years ago. Months had passed before Scott’s resentment had bubbled over into a real fight.

He had not been the victor.

Jean breathes in deeply through her nose. “What is there to understand?”

She doesn’t turn towards Scott as she speaks. This is well-trodden ground. Scott wants to turn around. He already knows he won’t win the argument, no matter how correct he is. He wants to point that out to Jean, but knows this will only make things worse. These are not the kind of arguments she is swayed by. She doesn’t care.

“He’s an asshole, Jean!” Scott throws a hand up, gesturing emphatically at nothing. Sometimes, she listens to him better when he talks with his hands. “Exactly how is that hot for you?”

“Now who’s swearing?” Jean hisses.

All familiar ground. Scott resists the urge to pull at his own hair. “I’m not swearing at you. If anything, I’d be swearing at Logan, who’s not even — “

Jean pinches the bridge of her nose. “You are so.”

She cuts herself off with a tight exhale. Scott fills in the blanks himself: frustrating, annoying, pedantic. None of these labels change the fact that he is correct.

“Do you think I’m attracted to him because he’s an asshole to you?”

Finally, Jean turns towards him. Hands on her hips, her voice raises to a yell. The vase, brimming with roses and New England asters, rattles on the surface of the table.

Scott had asked Kurt to teleport him out to the gardens yesterday. While supervising, Kurt had wistfully crooned about how thoughtful a boyfriend Scott was. Scott had calmly explained that it wasn’t really thoughtful. The ritual is simple tradition, and these closing days of fall will be the last opportunity Scott will have before winter sets in. Ororo does not allow Scott to pluck flowers from her greenhouse in the attic.

“Maybe,” Scott says.

She hadn’t sworn at him, so Scott says nothing. He plays by her rules and resents it.

“Well, I’m not.” Jean marches up to him, arms forming an angry outline around her body. “I’m into him because he’s hot, Scott. I can’t help it, as I have explained to you many times, and you don’t have to rub it in my face!”

Jean glares down at him. Scott crosses his own arms, glaring defiantly up at her.

“He rubs it in enough for the both of you.”

All at once, the ambient murmur of Jean’s anger evacuates the room. Her expression neutralizes. Scott stays scowling as she marches towards the bathroom, not sparing a glance over her shoulder as she slams the door behind her.

Scott’s rapid pulse marks the passing of the next few moments as grievously slow. The shower gushes to life.

One set of toes beat against the carpet. The other set remains imprisoned in his cast. He listens to himself huff and wallows in his own aimless thoughts, mulling through feelings all prefixed with negatives: discontent, unhappiness, inadequacy.

The seconds crawl by. Water pounds against tile. A shapeless but distinctly human sound is barely audible over the showerhead’s caterwaul. Scott doesn’t know what it means save for the obvious. He should not have said that.

He stares down at his cast. He ignores the constant itch which scratches at the back of his mind. He had been angry. He still is. That knowledge doesn’t make anything easier.

Carefully, Scott hobbles onto his good leg. He supports his weight first on the table, then the ledge of the built-in bookshelf as he retrieves his chessboard from the topmost drawer. It hits the table’s surface with a satisfying thunk.

He repeats the same process in order to retrieve first the velvet case containing the pieces, then his book of puzzles. He flips to the next page in sequence. A short paragraph describing the history precedes the puzzle itself. Scott does not read this.

He sets up the board methodically. White king on B6, pawn on C6. Black king on A1, rook on D5. The familiar weight of each piece in his grasp is soothing. The set had been a gift from the Professor, on Scott’s sixteenth birthday. The book of puzzles had been a gift from Hank given the previous Christmas. The inside cover bears a thoughtful inscription wishing Scott luck in applying his mind to tasks which bring him pleasure rather than stress. It is followed by a quip about surviving Y2K.

Scott breathes. He likes puzzles.

White to move. The pawn must be promoted. It marches forward, threatening the rook on the diagonal. Scott thinks. Water splatters against the floor. He remembers Jean at thirteen, knuckles white against floral chintz upholstery, sweat dripping from her forehead and onto the puffy collar of her blouse. She’d been trying to levitate her mother’s teacup. Now, she doesn’t even bother using her hands to lift shampoo bottles.

Using the king to threaten the rook results in a skewer. He walks it back down the board, a slow dance with black’s rook. He’s proud of Jean. She has grown in ways Scott could never have predicted. She had been so timid when her parents had first allowed her to attend the institute at fifteen. He remembers watching quietly from behind the bannister as she had fumbled up the stairs with two oversized suitcases in tow. When Scott had offered to help her carry them, both had clattered to the floor. She hadn't even noticed him.

White’s pawn promotes to a queen. Jean has forged an identity for herself over the years. She has grown confident, kind, knowledgeable, and emotionally intelligent in a way Scott has always struggled with. At eighteen, she had temporarily quit the X-Men to attend university — for the experience, she had first told Scott, and then to figure out if she was going to be this for the rest of her life after he had pressed.

The statement had baffled him. Scott had never considered that he could be anyone besides Scott Summers.

The pieces stand stubbornly on the board. The solution eludes him. Stalemate is the best outcome.

Logan has that sort of confidence as well. Scott has heard him call the Institute his home just as often as he has left at the drop of a hat. Important things to take care of, important people to help, important secrets to keep, surely. Logan both chose to be an X-Man and understands who he is outside of that role.

There is nothing but stalemate. Scott threads fingers through his hair. The arms of his visor dig into his temples. Blood thumps in his ears, the quickening tattoo of frustration. The shower shuts off. Water drips from Jean’s hair onto the tiles. But these are the only moves that make sense. Scott skims over the setup: White to move. Mate in 8. He grinds his teeth.

There is no way to win. Who is Scott if he is not the leader of the X-Men? He doesn’t know. He chose, at some point, not to. At Scott’s core, he’s unshakably certain that there is nothing else.

He is fine with this. He is grateful for what he has. He needs nothing more.

The bathroom door clicks open. Jean emerges, immersed in a cloud of steam.

The corner of the towel is knotted at her breastbone. Another is draped over her shoulder, covering her hair. Scott continues to stare at the chessboard. Humid, she hovers at his side. She does not speak.

Scott licks his lips. “Non-sarcastically,” he begins, careful to keep his tone neutral. “Why do you think he’s attractive?”

Despite Scott’s best efforts, Jean is still annoyed. Scott suspects she is, at least, based on the dramatic sigh she releases as she plops down in the chair opposite the table. She runs the towel over her damp hair. “Is this really what you want to talk about?”

“Yes,” Scott answers. He can come up with a myriad of answers to his question. Not one spells success for their relationship.

Across the table, Jean stares at him. It isn’t until the silence has stretched past the point of discomfort that Scott realizes that had been speaking rhetorically.

“I’m being serious.”

Jean blinks, very slowly, like she is resisting the need to roll her eyes. “Why is anything attractive?”

Blankly, Scott stares at her. Frustration presses Jean’s lips into a flat line. Heat floods Scott’s cheeks when he realizes. “Why are you being sarcastic at me?”

“Because there’s not an answer. Things are hot because they’re hot, Scott. It’s not explainable.” Jean exhales sharply through her nose. “And it wasn't sarcasm.”

“Everything has a reason.”

With yet another sigh, Jean pinches the bridge of her nose. She probably thinks he’s being intentionally obtuse. Scott does not care: he thinks she is making excuses.

“Okay.” The towel whips itself from Jean’s head and vanishes into the bathroom. She uses her hands to re-adjust the one at her sternum as it begins to slip down her breasts. Scott’s gaze slides off the chessboard, lingering for a split second before continuing up to her face. “So everything has a reason. Why do you love me?”

Panic floods Scott’s limbs. Words fail him. There must be an expected answer, but Scott has no idea what it is. He will say the wrong thing, he’s sure, but he settles quickly on, “Lots of reasons.”

Jean nods. “Same idea. Lots of little reasons. And I probably don’t even know what most of them are.”

He tempers his sigh of relief. There is no need to let Jean know he had been panicking if she hadn’t noticed. Her gaze calm, it doesn’t seem as if she had. Scott folds his hands under his chin and nods, sagely. It takes him a long few moments to catch up to the conversation.

“But you could figure them out. If you wanted to.”

Jean leans back in the chair, arms crossed over her chest. Her breasts pillow against the towel. Scott finds himself distracted by this. This is as affirming as it is annoying. He doesn’t understand how he could have thought he was gay.

“Maybe,” Jean says. She gestures vaguely about Scott’s chessboard. “Or maybe it’s just ineffable.”

Perhaps Scott is overcompensating.

He grinds his teeth. The thought is ridiculous. He stares down at the board. The pawn becomes a queen — and then what? There are a total of fifteen legal moves. Scott begins to check them off, one by one.

With delicate fingers, Jean nudges the queen to F7. Scott’s jaw drops.

“This isn’t a game.” Annoyed, Scott moves the piece back. “And that’s not a legal move.”

“I know. Solve it this way.” Chin propped up on one hand, Jean moves the piece back to F7.

Scott’s hands fall open-palmed to the table. The gears of his brain grind and creak. “Then — I lose. Or stalemate. It's not even a puzzle anymore.”

Jean says nothing. When Scott finally looks up, her eyebrows are furrowed in confusion as if she believes Scott is missing an extremely simple element of the conversation. Anger whips the pit of his stomach. He snaps, “Why are you acting like you’re better at chess than I am?”

Jean squints. “How am I acting like I’m better than you at chess?”

Past annoyance, Scott frowns in an attempt to prevent himself from scowling. “Who’s move is it? How many moves? How am I supposed to — what’s going on?”

A smile quirks Jean’s lips. “It’s not about chess, Scott.”

He stares at her, eyebrows furrowed.

“It’s a metaphor.”

Seconds creep by, silent.

“You can’t solve — “

Scott holds up a hand, cutting her off. “I get it.”

People can’t be solved. They’re random, chaotic, messy, and ineffable. People aren't puzzles. He rubs at his temples.

He is an idiot.

“You know I love you, right?” Jean extends a hand across the board. With a slow exhale, Scott sets his hand in hers. He needs to be enough for her. “Just the way you are.”

“Don’t read my mind.”

“I’m not.”

Jean twists her wrist, their interlocked fingers fanning out across an orderly array of black and white boxes.

Scott swallows. “I know.”

He works very hard to be the person he is. For Jean, for the Professor, for the students. Jean’s hand is warm in his.

“Thank you,” Scott eventually says.

Jean tucks damp hair behind her ear. Eyes bare, the smattering of freckles beneath her eyes visible, lips chapped from the dry November air — she’s beautiful.

“Are you actually upset that I find Logan attractive.” She bites into her lip, worried. “Or is it about…?”

She trails off, leaving the end of her sentence unspoken. Scott doesn’t need for her to spell it out. He turns back to the board.

“No,” he says. “It’s not about that.”

“Okay.”

The steam has faded. Cool air pricks at the tip of Scott’s nose. Jean must be cold.

“You should get dressed.”

Scott doesn’t move the piece back. He imagines the queen in its original position. Fifteen moves. Like checking off a shopping list.

“Yeah,” Jean says. “We’re good?”

“Yeah.” Scott clears his throat. He wonders if Jean knows he’s lying. “We’re good.”

Jean stands. Her fingers are soft on Scott’s skin. She leans in, squeezing his shoulders, and presses a dry kiss to his temple.

If she does, Scott supposes, it doesn’t really matter. He’ll get over it eventually.

“Will you show me?”

The words are quiet in the desolation of their bedroom.

Jean rolls over. The sheets rasp against her skin. Her fingers are soft on his shoulder.

Flat-backed to the mattress, Scott is pinned.

“You can’t explain it.” His voice is too loud. Dim moonlight leaks in through slats in the blinds. “It’s ineffable.”

She stirs. Her fingers are wrapped firmly around Scott’s bicep, an anchor. In darkness like this, Scott is nearly blind.

“But you could show me. What it feels like.”

Jean is really awake, now. She must be. Scott can feel her slink around the perimeter of his mind, not penetrating but spectating. Examining. She tries to figure him out.

“Are you asking me to make you attracted to Logan,” she asks. “Again.”

Reality leaves Scott’s face flushed with heat. “No,” he says. “Not — permanently. Or not.”

Scott cuts himself off. Curled around his arm, he can feel Jean’s heart pounding against him.

“I just want to understand. You.”

Silence hangs. Scott feels as if he’s suffocating.

“I don’t know.” Jean’s voice kisses his skin. Her breath is humid. “I don’t think that’s going to make you feel better.”

He closes his eyes. She knows.

“Yeah,” Jean confirms.

Scott doesn’t know why that makes him feel so ashamed.

“I don’t want it to make me feel better.” He stares at the ceiling. “I just want to know.”

Jean is silent. She licks her lips. Her tongue, wet and warm, grazes his shirt. “I don’t want to make it worse.”

His anger flares.

“Jean,” Scott hisses. He can’t even keep his own displeasure a secret and — “You know literally everything about me.”

More silence follows. She doesn’t need to speak for Scott to know she feels guilty.

“Sorry.” The sheets murmur as she pulls away, an arm reaching for the bedside lamp.

Scott catches her shoulder. “Don’t.”

Jean turns to look at him — at least, Scott assumes she does. The boundaries between bed, face, and hair are lost in red static.

“Just show me.”

Without another word, Jean pushes into him.

“Do you remember everything like this?”

Scott speaks as he watches Logan lean in, chin tilted daringly upwards. His head bobs only a few inches beneath Scott’s. His skin is tan, his beard speckled grey. He smells like pine needles.

“Like what?” Jean’s voice rings in his ear. Scott jumps.

The contrast is disorienting. Logan’s saying something. Scott has to focus, watching Logan’s lips flap before the audio kicks in: -olding up?

“Fine. I think he’s bored, mostly.”

That why he’s bein’ such a hardass?

Annoyance surges, then swells. The emotion spits at him as turbulent whitewater. It isn’t until the vision of Logan’s face fades out that he realizes Jean is twisting the memory, over-emphasizing the parts she wants Scott to pay attention to.

“Sorry.”

Scott scowls. Fluidly, the tape rewinds.

That why he’s bein’ such a hardass?

“He cares,” Jean says. She’s leaning against the wall, synthetic fabric of her costume tugging at the delicate skin of her forehead. It’s too tight. It’s fine. Scott breathes. Jean’s attention strays down the rugged curve of Logan’s neck. “Would you rather he didn’t?”

I’d rather he didn’t get his panties in a twist every time somethin’ don’t go his way.

Scott doesn’t let her shy away. At least, he thinks he doesn’t. If he focuses, Scott can still feel the firm mattress against his back.

Jean rolls her eyes. A retort bubbles in the back of her mind, something like Say what you want, but Scott… She doesn’t get the chance to complete it before Logan’s leaning in even closer. The dull thump of a racing heartbeat pounds in Scott’s ears, the pit of his stomach twisting as Logan gets just a little too close.

And if you need someone to —

Scott’s voice thunders across the room. He turns to see himself cast in full color, the only interruptions his visor and the bright red material of the cast dangling pathetically from his knee. He hadn’t known it was red.

This isn’t what Scott had meant.

He feels himself breathe as the memory melts away. Jean’s memory is fleshed out in an overwhelming level of detail. The pores on Logan’s nose, a bit of dust in his hairline. He’d had a piece of spinach stuck in his teeth after lunch that day, which Jean had politely let him know about. Scott’s just shocked that he eats vegetables.

“What did you want to see?”

Scott can’t speak. He imagines raising a hand and pushing open a door. The cavern of Jean’s mind opens up to him, pitch-black, the kiss of an icy gale on his cheeks the only indication of its scope. For a moment, Scott shocks himself with his own skill at manipulating her mind — only to realize that Jean is the real driver.

“What do you want to see?”

Jean asks again. Scott’s thoughts, malformed and erratic, careen around the words. He can’t speak.

Knees give. He steps forward into darkness.

Mushroom clouds of steam exhale into his eyes.

The yawning cavern of Jean’s mind tightens and reforms around him. Scott reaches up to adjust his ruby quartz visor to find it missing.

This is not the only thing missing. He doesn’t have a hand. Or a face. Two pairs of bare feet peek through the cloud cover, one set arched and manicured, the other broad, flat, and hairy. Steam dissipates beneath the force of his attention, scaling rugged calves, muscular thighs, and sharp hipbones pressed together with bruising force.

It’s him and Logan. They are kissing, rough skin and dull teeth on lips. Limp strands of hair are tacked to Scott’s forehead, creating tracks for thick rivulets of water to run down his forehead. He’s clutching at Logan’s back like the moment will slip away if he does so — and he never wants for it to end.

Don’t get too scared, pretty boy. Logan growls into Scott’s neck before his teeth sink in. Broad palms around Scott’s waist pressure him to keep up the same needy pace at which his hips rock forward.

Scott’s toes curl. He loves and hates the dialogue in equal measure.

Logan, please. We’re not supposed to —

Scott cuts himself off as Logan grinds into him. They are nearly the same height.

Just don’t tell anyone.

Long, lean arms wrap around Logan’s neck as Scott finally gives into what he wants.

More than what he wants, this is what he needs. The shame of how good this feels leaves every nerve ending sparking to life. He kicks his hips forward, unabashed moaning echoing off the shower walls as Logan takes a half-step back, his feet bracketing Scott’s, bewhiskered back of his hand forming a snug channel for their cocks to fuck into.

Discomfort tingles at the edges of Scott’s awareness. Logan is bigger than him, Scott’s own cock so petit next to his, but there’s no shame. They feel good. Logan’s other hand digs into Scott’s ass, lips twisting around the words, You gonna cum for me, boy scout?

Scott turns. For one horrifying second, he realizes that he is alone.

The abyss opens up around him. Scott is falling, crawling, scuttling like a beetle through cold gravel. Searchlights arc through twisting caverns. He squeezes through a boulder choke and tumbles down, scrabbling at unforgiving rock with phantom fingers until he lands.

Yellow curtains flutter beneath a summer breeze.

The sounds of the street spill into the apartment. It’s the one Jean had shared with Misty in the Village. Scott had only been here only once. It smells of cigarettes.

Logan sits at the dining room table. A cup of coffee steams in front of him.

Good brew, he says. The woman nods. Scott watches from the outside, heart racing. Dry, masculine lips meet the rim.

The woman doesn’t speak. Faceless, she flutters around his seat. She had invited him here, but what is she supposed to do now? Someone is coming back at four. The available hours stretch into the future, a ripe opportunity unlikely to be presented again. If she’s going to try, it has to be now. Now or never. Now —

Did you really just invite me here for coffee?

Humiliation follows. Fingers cling shyly to elbows. Scott experiences the motion in echo.

No.

Then what?

She turns her back, teeth worrying a nervous lip. Logan stalks towards her. Tell me.

His chest is warm on the backs of Jean’s shoulders. Had he always been this tall? She breathes in, turning to peer at him from the corner of her eye. She’s never done this before. Regardless, she knows the game.

Tell you what?

Logan wants her. His need is so dire it burns as a roaring fire in the pit of his stomach. Despite the blistering agony of his lust, the touch on her shoulders remains gentle.

Come on, Jean. Scott’s breath hitches as Logan’s rolls over the back of her neck. You want me. Admit it.

Jean burns. It’s a controlled flame. The scent of a freshly-burned cigarette wafts through the window. She turns in Logan’s arms.

Maybe I do.

Scott doesn’t hear Jean’s voice, but feels the reverberations of the words deep in his chest. His palms splay over the shirt demurely obscuring Logan’s muscular chest. Scott wants to rip it off.

Or maybe you want me.

Her gaze flicks up to meet Logan’s. He breathes in, sharp and heavy. His scent is masculine, earthy pine and musk, and the weight of his gaze leaves her lighter than a feather.

Maybe I do.

Scott licks his lips. Logan’s eyes wander down. His arousal is intoxicating.

What are you going to do about it?

In Jean’s world, there’s only one answer. With hand at her waist, he hoists Jean up onto the table and presses himself between her parted knees.

What do you want me to do about it?

A war of need follows. Smooth lips tug at Scott’s. Hands prise at buttons, belt, breasts, Jean’s fingers in his hair tugging him where she needs. It’s a powerplay that Logan is more than willing to lose if it means getting more of her. Jean revels in this.

She shrugs off her blazer, deep red with padded shoulders. The detail is almost enough to make the scene feel like a memory. Logan already has the first half of her blouse unbuttoned and the stiff cups of her bra pulled down so he can bite at her nipples. He is raw, animalistic, the kind of man one expects to be completely uncontrollable.

But when Jean pushes him away, four fingers against each of his shoulders, he moves.

Good boy, she says, and Logan loves it.

He rips off her heels, kissing at the sensitive arches of her feet. Teeth nip at her ankles, a tongue tracing the contours of her calves. Jean sighs as she pulls off her own shirt, her bra, tossing each over the opposite end of the table and into oblivion. Fingers knit in Logan’s hair, twisting, pulling, commanding each movement. He pulls aside satin panties and buries himself in her.

Scott throws his head back. The sensation, slick and intimate, recollected and reconstructed from Scott’s own actions, leaves him reeling. Scott tries to close his eyes. The image of Logan with his head buried between two plump thighs insists regardless.

Get up here.

Logan’s bodyweight is heavy against his chest.

Noses pressed together, Logan knows what Jean wants without her having to say it. He kisses her jaw and her neck. Their fingers interlock. His hands are strong. He’s hard against the inside of her thigh, but he isn’t rushed, waiting for Jean to slide pointed toes up the back of his thigh, over the swell of his ass, and finally hook in the small of his back.

Fuck me.

The dull head lines up. Terror grips Scott around the throat, his palms on Logan’s chest, pushing back and up and away even as the length of him leaves thighs trembling, toes curling, chest heaving in pleasure. Logan loves the way Scott feels, so beautiful and tight and precious and he can’t repress the urge to fuck into Scott’s delicate body, to ruin him, to claim him —

With a heave, Scott snaps from the scene.

Incorporeal, his consciousness sinks further into Jean’s. He trickles through narrow channels, ensconced in a darkness held within water-weathered walls. Scott gasps as he slides into an airbell, stale oxygen filling his lungs as the distant sound of Jean’s voice echoes in his ears.

He tries to scream, but has no mouth. Gravity pulls him under once more. The system grows ever more erratic as he descends, contracting in on him as he streams down spaghetti-thin caves, Jean’s mind forcing his into shapes it was never made to hold, extruding him into threads of himself, until —

His ass hits the padded seat.

It’s flat, sure. But very cute. Handsome.

For a half-second, Jean blinks from him across the table. It is small, rectangular, and draped in a white tablecloth. A blink interrupts her blissful expression, only the rose centerpiece remaining static as the world flips on its head.

Scott stares at himself, sweaty and nervous.

Why are you nervous?

He’s dressed to the nines. Crisp black tux, hair slicked back. He tugs at his tie, a little too tight. He hates wearing ties.

No one’s going to notice. Or did you forget I’m a telepath?

Jean’s soft voice doesn’t reassure him. It rarely ever does, not when Scott is this agitated. The waiter passes by to top off their waters. Scott grips his in a trembling hand and brings it to his lips. The glass is already half empty as the waiter walks away.

He’s so cute.

Scott fiddles with the tablecloth. Tugs at his tie. Takes in a deep breath. We haven’t even ordered the appetizer yet.

Jean raises her eyebrows. You want to eat first?

No. Okay. Scott breathes in again. Okay.

You ready?

He nods. Jean licks her lips.

Get under the table.

As swift as he is stiff, Scott lifts the tablecloth and crawls beneath it. At Jean’s command, his chair jolts back into place behind him. The din of the conversation remains static.

No one had noticed. Jean grins at the waiter as he approaches. Tentative fingers brush her knee. My husband’s in the bathroom, could you give us just another minute?

She leans back in her chair, relaxing. Couples and families chatter around them. From beneath the table, anxiety and arousal roll off Scott in equal measure. Jean sighs, kicking one foot out.

Feet first.

Scott obeys. His lips are dry against her toes, pressure hiccupping as they slide over the straps in her heels. Twisted into knots of anxiety and self-restriction, Scott wants as much as he hates that he wants. Lips slide over her freshly-shaved legs. He inhales her floral perfume as he kisses the inside of her knees.

Push up my dress.

Scott listens. The lacy hem of her dress scrapes up her thighs. Scott’s hands heel the fabric like an obedient dog. Her knuckles rub behind his ear.

Humiliation shreds the edges of the fantasy. The emotion does not belong to Jean.

He wants her to stop talking. Jean rolls her eyes. No one will notice.

It isn’t even real. Her fingers coil in his hair, pulling him closer. Scott’s breath is humid on her panties. His anxiety permeates even her most private of fantasies. Kiss me.

Jean alights, frantic, on his shoulder.

Amorphous fear burns him, a sharp contrast to her pleasure. Scott attempts to quiet her. The fantasy continues.

Her hips roll into Scott’s face. Tongue and lips tease at her pussy through soft fabric. He wants to please her.

The restaurant carries on, unaware. Jean watches the other couples, holding hands and chatting happily. The Scott of her fantasies is able to peel back the layers of his anxiety and self-doubt. He sucks at her clit, dull teeth over cotton, all stubborn loyalty and obedience. He does this not only because he wants Jean to lose herself in pleasure, in joy, in thrill but because he wants to do so himself.

A man leans forward, whispering seductively into his date’s ear. Jealousy mauls her.

Scott leans over her in the doorway of her apartment in the Village, arm around her waist, all confidence and bravado.

Jean’s feathered tail hooks around him. Scott is the antithesis of stuffy. Wings expand. Scott leans down and whispers to her —

Shaking, the ceiling stares down at Scott.

Jean’s sweaty body lies next to his. “You were supposed to wait for me.”

His lungs burn. “Sorry.”

Silence hangs. The yawning expanse of Jean’s mind makes their room feel claustrophobic. Scott swallows.

“I didn’t know how.”

The memory of Jean’s jealousy stings. And the image of himself as confident and capable cast in the hazy film of fantasy even more so.

“Helpful?” Jean asks.

Anxiety ricochets off the walls of his skull. He is certain Jean can hear it. He closes his eyes.

“Yeah.”

Jean’s fingers intertwine with his.

“Okay,” she says. “Good.”

Scott’s eyes open.

The world is red. Jean’s technicolor fantasies dance on the back of his eyelids.

Jealousy. Confidence. Need. Love. A spectrum of unfamiliar emotions burn in the core of his chest.

She doesn’t have nearly as much control as the Professor.

Fantasies aren’t real. Scott curls his toes — one set free, the other encased in plaster. They’re fake. He counts his fingers, five on each side. They don’t necessarily mean anything.

His chest expands. The weight of Jean’s head bears down on his heart.

The queen sees infinitely, in every direction. All-powerful, she is the obvious choice of promotion, the ultimate aspiration of every pawn.

In the mind of Scott’s eye, the puzzle plays out before him. White’s pawn promotes. Black’s rook marches to C4, demanding a stalemate. No way to win.

The scene rewinds. Scott leans over Jean, whispering in her ear. Logan understands her without words. White’s pawn promotes to a rook.

Black’s march to C4 is suicide. Instead, the rook withdraws to the A file, attempting to shield the king. White’s king steps forward, threatening on the diagonal. Black’s rook evades, fleeing to G.

Across the table, Scott’s richly-colored facsimile sets aside the image of himself as someone perfect. He gives into chaos. At Jean’s behest, he climbs under the tablecloth.

The white rook advances down the C file.

Checkmate.

The pawn must achieve less than its highest aspiration. The game is lost in the pursuit of individual perfection.

Scott’s eyes close. Jean’s arm is thrown across his chest.

He falls back asleep.

Chapter Text

Backwash swirls in the bottom of Scott’s cup.

He stares down at its frothy surface and frowns. They had barely spoken that morning, dressing and brushing teeth in silence, Jean glancing away each time Scott had looked at her.

Probably thinking she was being slick. Scott’s peripheral vision isn’t as limited as she thinks it is.

It’s nearly lunch, now. Scott frowns. One elbow propped up on the edge of the kitchen counter, he dumps the rest of his water into the sink before refilling the glass. An apple core sits on his plate amidst a field of crumbs. The trash can is on the other side of the room.

Jean had nervously scuttled off before nine, placing a kiss on Scott’s temple as he’d continued to chew on dry toast. She’d had a class to teach. Scott had remained in the kitchen, watching as the adult residents had filtered through. Peter, Hank, Rogue, Kurt, Ororo — even Logan, who had only poured himself a mug of coffee and scoffed in Scott’s direction.

Scott deeply resents having to sit down to eat breakfast. Under normal circumstances, he would be in the gym at this time. He would hop out of the shower with enough time to be ten minutes early to his much-dreaded 10:30 math class.

Not dreaded by Scott, of course. He likes math. The dread originates solely from the children.

Instead, the intervening hours stretch by. Scott is sure he could find something useful to do — fiddle with the danger room programs, check in on the work being done out in the hangar, review the truly abysmal reports that Ororo had been writing during Scott’s field absence. He doesn’t.

It all feels a little pointless.

Standing at the precipice of Jean’s mind, dank wind caresses his cheeks from deep beneath the earth. The memory sends shivers down his spine.

Since last night, Scott had spent an inordinate amount of time picking apart and analyzing that experience. He had never been particularly capable at literary analysis, and Jean’s unfathomably rich emotional life only further complicates matters.

However, the most obvious conclusions are — well, obvious.

Scott drinks. A thin stream of water escapes from the corner of his mouth. He slams the glass onto the counter with a resounding thunk. The distant sound of laughter echoes down the halls. Scott runs fingers through his hair.

Jean is bored with him.

This conclusion is not shocking. They had only ever been with each other. He still remembers sitting next to her in the gardens, glaring at the daisies, knowing that she must know that he was working up the courage to ask her on a date, and jumping at the touch of her hand to his, and inferring that she had intended to say yes and requiring minutes on end to work up the nerve to ask regardless.

Scott plays by the rules. He needs to play by the rules.

He stares down at the marbled countertop. His lower back, arched at an odd angle, begins to ache.

The rules around sex are complicated. Not informed by any sort of religious creed or moral panic, Scott has simply structured his life to avoid distraction. If Scott doesn’t address his own sexual needs, let alone Jean’s and the health of their relationship, it causes distraction.

He is resentful of that reality. There is no reason sex should ever climb from the bottom of Scott’s priority list. Even when he allows them to be indulgent, this is under special circumstances only — primarily to celebrate no longer believing the other is dead. The only instance wherein sex should be a genuine priority is the intent to conceive a child. Which they are not.

And yet, Scott still has to reckon with the reality that, should he proverbially shove his head in the sand, bad things happen. Jean becomes cranky. Scott becomes frustrated. He begins to think uncomfortable thoughts.

This is the most unpleasant part of ignoring his sexual needs. Even worse than the internal experience of becoming distracted by one of Ororo’s revealing outfits or the outline of Rogue’s hips in latex is the fact that Jean or the Professor might overhear. The ordeal is mortifying.

Scott pours himself another glass of water.

The purpose of sexuality in Scott’s life is to prevent chaos. He and Jean have sex on Wednesday and Saturday nights, unless there is a scheduling issue such as a holiday or mission or attack on the mansion by an aggrieved alien race. Their favorite position is cowgirl. Jean plunders the depths of Scott’s mind until he has loosened up enough to cum and actually enjoy it.

Scott’s cheeks burn. It isn’t surprising that Jean is bored. Their sex life is structured to eschew excitement. Scott requires it that way — he doesn’t have wants. He can’t handle anything beyond boring.

An audible groan echoes off the empty walls of the kitchenette. The last inch of a pot of coffee is boiling on the counter. Scott should shut it off.

He doesn’t move.

Jean, on the other hand, has a wealth of wants. Logan and him, kissing and grinding on each other in the showers, ashamed of their desires but wanting each other too badly to stop. Logan, rough and wild yet still anticipating her needs, tamed by his own worshipful adoration of her. Scott, anxious beyond compare, following Jean’s lead for the sake of her pleasure.

Scott now knows what it feels like for Jean to want Logan. He also knows what it feels like for Jean to want him.

It does not make him feel better. But it doesn’t make him feel worse, either, just more. An uncontrolled wave of want followed by variegated ripples of longing and hurt and joy and grief. Scott couldn’t ever begin to pick them apart. He doesn’t understand how she feels so much — it makes him feel empty by comparison.

And he remembers the image of himself, leaning over Jean and whispering into her ear outside of her old apartment. He hadn’t heard what he had said, what she had wanted him to say, but Scott can guess.

Jean wants to hear how much Scott wants her.

Water slides down his throat. The smell of singed coffee fills the room.

The person in her mind is not Scott Summers. He is not an exhibitionist. He is not instinctual — sexually, at least. He does not like feet, nor does he like men. Contemplating the possibility of these things fills Scott with a primal sort of revulsion.

The latter especially. Scott is not gay. Jean knows that Scott is not gay. She knows everything about him.

Another thunk, glass on marble. Anxiety creeps into his fingers. Water sloshes up the sides of the cup.

That’s the fundamental problem, isn’t it? Jean sees everything that Scott is, was, and could be. She knows as well as Scott that he isn’t any of those things that she wants from him.

It occurs to Scott, quite calmly and logically, that Jean could change him. She could do this quite easily, in fact.

Cool marble presses against Scott’s splayed fingers. The full glass of water sits, wavering, to the side of his hand. Arousal coils in the pit of his belly.

Rapid-fire, the idea of allowing Jean to have that level of control — no, Scott corrects himself, that she has always had that control and simply chosen not to exercise it — leaves him trembling.

White-hot overwhelm burns at the forefront of Scott’s mind. He wishes he could have the cool marble of the countertop against his forehead. He glances at the clock, searching for an escape from the wild thoughts that attempt to ravage his control.

Hour hand between ten and eleven, it is later than he’d thought. The minute hand falls just short of the six.

Scott jumps. “Ten twenty-seven,” he hisses, in lieu of a swear. He grabs his crutches, abandoning the full glass and plate on the counter. He can clean later. He’s already well past late.

It isn’t until he has hobbled out of the kitchenette and halfway down the hall, however, that he remembers the burning coffee pot.

Grumbling, Scott turns around.

He supposes there are things worse than being late.

“I think you should make me like feet.”

Jean, cradled between the arms of the accent chair in the corner of their room, frowns. Bare feet tucked into the crack beside the cushion, her flats are abandoned on the carpet in front of her. She has been ignoring him all day.

Confused, she looks up from her book. “What?”

She squints. She hadn’t heard him. Although the door is closed, he had still spoken softly. Possessed, he stares down at her shoes and braces himself.

“I think you should make me like feet,” Scott announces. He assures his voice is loud enough for her to hear him. “Psychically, I mean. With your powers.”

Jean stares at him with blank incomprehension. A beat passes in silence.

She explodes. “What the fuck, Scott?!”

A stubborn frown pulls Scott’s lips down. “Don’t swear at me.”

“What the hell else do you expect me to do?!” Jean slams her book down onto the carpet, shoving her shoes back on. “Why would you even — there’s nothing — why would you even say something like that?”

Her voice is loud. It hurts Scott’s ears.

“Stop yelling at me,” he says. “I’m just trying to do what you want.”

“That is not what I want!”

She stumbles to her feet, arms crossed. The shape of her mouth mirrors Scott’s. His armpits ache from the pressure of his crutches. Exhausted confusion burbles through him. He should have taken a seat before speaking.

“What do you mean?” Scott snaps. “That idea came from your brain.”

The expression that rakes across Jean’s face is completely unfamiliar to Scott. With her jaw clenched tightly, her lips pulled back, and nose wrinkled, the closest comparison Scott can think of is the submissive smile of a primate.

“That’s,” Jean hisses. She doesn’t look at him. “Gross.”

And then, the pieces of Jean’s body language click into place like the final piece of a puzzle. She is embarrassed. Scott packs away his anger.

“Jean.” He focuses very intently on making himself sound kind, not stern or stiff. He has been told this is how he usually sounds. “It’s fine. You can like feet. It’s not gross. Or — “ He pauses. There is no need to fib. What Scott is proposing doesn’t make sense, otherwise. “I mean, it is. Which is why I would need you to make me like it. But I’m not judging you.”

Feet are actually quite disgusting to Scott, but so is Logan. And exhibitionism. And pornography. And the horror movies that Kurt screens in the theater every few weeks. And olives. And canned fruits. And cottage cheese. And the grainy, too-dry texture of chalk on his fingertips, and —

He terminates his own train of thought. Jean is staring silently at the floor. With no small amount of alarm, Scott notices that her skin is darker than usual.

“Are you okay?”

She says nothing. Scott hobbles a half-step closer. Jean only becomes more tense, shoulders curling in.

Scott realizes, with twin pangs of annoyance and guilt, that her face is simply so flushed that the hue has shifted across the color spectrum. This has resulted in Scott being able to perceive it.

He has never seen Jean like this before. Scott stares at her and she stares at the floor. Her shoulders rise and fall as she sucks in deep, steady breaths. He has no idea what to say. It doesn’t seem as if Jean does either, the two of them at a conversational impasse.

Eventually, the silence becomes unbearable.

“Did you know it’s, uh, actually really normal?” Scott clears his throat. “Because the part of your brain — in the primary somatosensory cortex, obviously — that’s responsible for processing all of the sensations in your body, the foot part is right next to the, uh. Genitalia.”

Two vertical palms cover Jean’s face. Scott gathers that he had not chosen the correct thing to say.

“So it’s like. Common. Average. Very expected, you know. Even if I don’t — well, you know. Hank told me that. A while ago.”

“Scott.” Jean’s voice is quiet and shaky, muffled behind her own hands. Scott listens to her attentively. “He told you that because he has a foot fetish.”

Her voice wavering, she sounds completely miserable. Scott frowns.

“Hank?” he asks. Jean nods. Scott thinks. He cannot say it doesn’t make sense. And he supposes Jean would know. So instead, he simply says, “Oh.”

Finally, Jean looks Scott in the eye. He shivers beneath the intensity of it.

“Can you just give me ten minutes.”

Woodenly, Scott nods. He hadn’t expected this reaction. In her fantasies, Jean had been completely carefree and confident. She had been unashamed. The appeal had been not in the taboo, but in the wanton embrace of her own desires. Scott doesn’t understand how this is any different from that.

He has never seen her so embarrassed before — not even during the training exercise where the flamethrowers had melted one of Bobby’s ice bridges directly over her head. Her costume had been somehow damaged a few weeks before, despite being composed of unstable molecules, and she had elected to simply wear a little yellow leotard over black tights instead, no bra beneath, and the water had —

“Scott.”

The door flies open behind him. Scott realizes, with a dull horror, that she is listening. He flees as rapidly as he can manage.

It isn’t until he’s in the hall that he wraps his mind around the reality of what he had just agreed to. He can’t spend the next ten minutes staring at the wall and combing over this conversation. Or he could, actually, and would, but probably shouldn’t. “Jean — “

Turning over his shoulder, Jean is completely eclipsed by a meteor of multi-colored plastic. Scott barely manages to catch the object, one dull corner digging painfully into his palm not two inches from his nose.

The door slams shut in his face.

Scott blinks. A Rubik’s cube sits calmly in his palm.

There are forty-three quintillion possible configurations.

Scott cannot remember where exactly he had read that number, but it had stuck out to him. He could recreate the math if he wanted to. Forty-three quintillion is an interesting number itself, even beyond the process of calculation. The figure is so large it falls just beyond the edge of being easily conceptualized.

The stool is beneath him once again. The kitchenette is empty. His cast itches. The idea of hobbling all the way downstairs, further contributing to the buildup of sweat and grime clinging to his skin, makes him want to scratch his skin raw.

The mansion creaks. The cube does as well, right side turning clockwise as Scott forces long-still mechanisms to life. Wind whistles across the roof and rattles the windows. He tries to avoid thoughts of Jean, stewing not thirty feet away.

Hank, the Professor, and Scott had each received a cube as a stocking stuffer the previous year. Scott still had not managed to solve his, unlike the other two. He had been meaning to save the activity for a long stretch of free time. The activity is perfect for this era of Scott’s life in a certain sense, but he is shocked Jean had remembered the puzzle tucked away in one of his drawers.

It is, tragically, not the kind of activity which can be completed in ten minutes.

Scott has been known to be somewhat obsessive. Perhaps rather than thoughtful, the choice had been intentionally cruel.

The smell of coffee fills his sinuses. Scott begins to turn the sides. He tracks one corner piece as it travels, developing a sense for how the sides rotate as it moves. He had never particularly cared for puzzles like this, not only for his difficulty distinguishing the colors from one another. The cube is visuospatial, repetitive, and inherently theoretical. It exists only to be solved — forty-three quintillion possible combinations and a single answer.

Scott much prefers chess. A game of give and take, chess is all about two-dimensional lines of tension, strategic sacrifice, and the unique potential of each piece. The outcomes are, with enough study, as predictable as they are beautiful. This is a shockingly apt allegory for a real battle.

The cube is different. There is a reason Hank had been the first to solve it among the three of them. Eight corners, twelve edges, six centers twisting around an unwieldy plastic core. The lightest-colored side of the corner piece, which Scott supposes is white, cycles through each corner position on the right-hand side — facing Scott at top-front, the ceiling at top-back, the coffee pot at bottom-back, the floor at bottom-front. Around and around and around, Scott finds four random combinations among forty-three quintillion.

Scott does not understand Jean. The sole solution among a number of possibilities Scott cannot conceptualize requires each piece to rest correctly-oriented in its designated slot. And Scott has to hold the thing not an inch in front of his face to even be able to see the difference between orange and red.

It doesn’t take Scott long to assemble the green side. The placements, of course, are not correct. The edges must be placed first, then the corners. He aligns each with the correct center. Slotting the corners in is relatively easy as well. Line the piece up, then move the top face clockwise, the right face clockwise, the top face counterclockwise, the right face counterclockwise. It’s a simple commutator, a repetition in inverse wherein the order of operations differentiates the results.

Scott’s head hurts.

High-pitched and tinny, the coffee pot beeps. Scott sets the cube on the table. The real challenge will be in placing the middle ring of edge pieces. The red and white piece sits caddy-corner to its spot, blue already aligned with its center. Moving it directly will displace the green layer. Moving it out of the way before twisting the slot up to meet it will displace the corner. Scott needs two sequences of moves.

He barely notices when Kitty walks in. “Oh.”

Scott does not understand Jean. He does not understand most people. Dynamics which are intuitive to him on the battlefield and even in other team-based scenarios are lost in the minutia of everyday interactions. He feels often as if everything would fall apart if he were not there to keep it glued together.

All Scott wants is for everything to function. He wants for the kids to grow to be productive members of society, for the X-Men to succeed in serving as an exemplar for the rest of mutantkind, for no one to die. The matters related to Scott’s sex life — a foot fetish, Jean’s flirtations with Logan, Scott’s broken leg, the twin behemoths of grief and discontent — all seem so frustratingly small in comparison.

“Professor Summers, can you actually solve that?”

Scott jolts. Kitty is standing in front of him, wide-eyed, holding a brimming mug of black coffee. It takes Scott a moment to answer.

“I’m trying.”

“Oh,” she says.

Scott wants her to go away. He wants to return to his own repetitive, cyclical thoughts. He wants to live inside the understanding that he never should have broached the topic. He wants to, for the millionth time, make his peace with the fact that Jean does not make sense because she simply doesn’t, and that is not the result of Scott’s failure.

“Why’d you put this blue piece here?”

Kitty points. Scott squints, bringing the cube right up to his visor.

He nearly swears. Teeth indent his lower lip.

“Oh, is it hard for you to see the colors?” Kitty chirps. Scott resists the urge to snap at her. “You know, you could take like a sharpie or something and just draw different symbols on the stickers. Then — “

“I don’t need any help.” His tone is curt. “Thank you.”

Kitty rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she says. She backs up, coffee wobbling right up to the rim of her cup. “No offense, prof, but you seem like the kinda guy who’d drive around the block, like, eight times rather than just asking for directions. Everyone needs help sometimes.”

With a little flip of her hair, she marches out of the room. Scott puzzles over the comment. “I would just MapQuest it?”

Down the hall, a bark of laughter echoes. She had meant that Scott was stubborn, or perhaps a bit standoffish.

It isn’t until nearly a full minute later, after Kitty has long disappeared, that Scott remembers that she is sixteen years old. She should not be drinking coffee.

Before Scott can decide how he wants to address that situation, Jean’s familiar presence arrives at the outskirts of his mind. He leaps to attention, grabbing his crutches and hopping back to their room.

A scowl twists across Scott’s mouth.

Abandoned on the kitchen counter, the cube sits half-finished.

Jean is still clutching her book.

“While I appreciate the sentiment.” Her words are careful. She had prepared them, but this is not a surprise. She had made Scott wait for much longer than ten minutes. “And I understand you were not trying to make fun of me.”

Scott stands, stock-still, on the other side of the room. The remark is beyond confusing. Had she thought that Scott was trying to? He’s a grown man, and she’s his fiance.

“I get it, Scott.” He blinks. “But I have no interest in making you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Her expression is unreadable. She sits curled up in the chair once again, the title of her book obscured behind a white-knuckled cage. Her face is still that strange, dark color.

“Stop thinking about how weird I look!” Her hands fly up to either side of her head.

“Stop reading my mind,” Scott intones, mostly out of habit. She is emotional. He understands that it is more difficult for her to control her powers under such circumstances. “I like doing things for you.”

“That’s not the point,” Jean hisses.

Briefly, Scott wonders if Jean would’ve reacted the same way if he’d asked for her to make him attracted to Logan.

As if in response, Jean groans miserably and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Yes,” Scott responds. “The point is that I would like it. If you made me.”

Jean is listening, but not intently. Scott clamps down on his reaction to the idea before it even occurs. He replaces the image with that of the Rubik’s cube, white corner piece rotating around the right-side face.

“I don’t even know if I could do that.”

Relief flushing through him, Scott exhales. It sounds almost like a sigh. “You haven’t even tried.”

“I don’t want you to do things that make you uncomfortable.” Then she shouldn’t be dissatisfied with him, Scott thinks unkindly. “Just because you’re worried that I’m unsatisfied.”

Scott stiffens. He grits his teeth. “I already told you to stop reading my mind.”

“I’m not,” Jean snaps. “I’ve known you for fifteen years, Scott Summers, and I don’t need to read your mind to know that what you saw made you upset!”

“I’m not upset.”

He is. Jean quirks an eyebrow, smug. Scott scowls.

“Whatever. So I’m upset because you’re yelling at me when I’m trying to be nice to you. You’re the one who’s always saying that I need to show you that I care.”

The volume of Scott’s voice steadily increases until he’s loud enough that anyone walking down the hall would realize that he and Jean are having an argument. He doesn’t care.

“Why would you even bring that up?” Jean rises to her feet. The vase, sitting on the frosted glass tabletop, begins to balefully clink.

Scott rolls his eyes. His head needs to move in a large, dramatic circle for the gesture to be intelligible. He does it not because it makes him feel better, but because he knows Jean hates it.

“And god forbid I try to make you happy.”

“I am happy.”

Scott doesn’t know if she is lying. He doesn’t know if he is even capable of making Jean happy. He doesn’t know if it matters, in the grand scheme of things, if anybody is happy.

He pivots.

“I want you to be happier. Which you could be. It’s easy. I’m offering.”

Jean remains silent. Scott stares at her, attempting to fix her with the serious gaze she often turns on him. He sees the narrow angle formed by her shoulders and her neck, the thin line of her lips, and the defensive cross of her arms beneath her breasts. Uninvited irritation barges into the forefront of Scott’s mind as he recalls that one of her fantasies had involved Logan literally anticipating her needs.

As unfair as it is unwelcome, the truth spills out of him. “Why would you not just tell me what you want?”

“It’s not like that.”

They’ve had sex twice a week for the last five years, circumstances permitting, and Scott still doesn’t know what Jean likes. The equanimity Scott had felt that morning is completely wiped away. Pointed, barbed, and accusatory, he directs his thoughts her way.

Judging by the way Jean flinches, she hears them.

“I know what you like, Scott. I know what you don’t like.” Everything Scott is, was, and will be. Under normal circumstances, he finds comfort in the concept. “Why talk about it? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m always uncomfortable.”

The response is automatic. It isn’t until Jean has stared at him blankly for a few empty seconds that Scott realizes how unintentionally funny it is.

Shaking her head, she exhales. A smile quirks at the edges of her lips. Deflated, Jean collapses onto the thin bench at the foot of the bed. Scott follows her lead.

The statement is funny, of course, because it is true. Scott is always uncomfortable: irritated, stressed, preoccupied. The only reason he is able to enjoy sex at all is because of Jean. The degree to which Scott dogmatically, pathetically needs her is —

Fingers intertwine in his.

Scott breathes in. “If you need thrills, I want you to get them from our relationship.” Perhaps that is Scott’s weakness. He feels Jean in his mind, listening, and ceases trying to put his thoughts into words. Instead, he batters Jean with his own helpless inadequacy, the bite of betrayal, the gnawing fear that one day it will be Scott standing jilted as Jean leaves him behind.

With a sigh, Jean scoops Scott’s head against her collarbone. He breathes in the scent of her. He considers that, as much as he needs order, she may require chaos in equal measure.

She doesn’t correct him.

“You’re always going to be enough for me. No matter what.”

Scott is sure this is not true, but he does not challenge her. It doesn’t need to be true. The idea is comforting regardless. Manicured nails till his scalp as he imagines her planting her seeds deep within the folds of his brain. He knows, down in the very bedrock of his person, that he could keep going without her.

But he does not want to. He does not want to need to.

He curls his arms around Jean’s waist. “I want you to have everything you want.”

Scott’s head bobs along with the ballooning of Jean’s chest. She sighs. “Nobody gets everything they want.”

The sentiment is frustratingly similar to Kitty’s. Scott does not even bother attempting to understand it in context.

“I’m offering.” Carefully, he disentangles himself from Jean’s grasp. He finds himself immensely grateful that she leaves his palm on the back of his head even as he stares into her eyes. “And you keep making excuses.”

The intimacy of staring into Jean’s eyes is two-fold. Unlike anyone else, she knows.

“You don’t need to make it complicated. Just say yes.”

Fingers cradle the nape of Scott’s neck. On the back of a single, brimming exhale, Jean mutters, “Okay.”

Scott grins. He kisses her.

Jean laughs. “Can’t believe we fought about feet.”

The scratchy material of Scott’s cast scrapes against the carpet as he leans in, pressing kisses down the soft line of Jean’s neck. “You started it.”

He doesn’t need to see Jean’s face to know that she is rolling her eyes.

“Sure.” She combs fingers through Scott’s hair as he kisses her in the same pattern that the Logan of her fantasy had. “Whatever you say, Scott.”

Gangly and unbalanced, Scott teeters down the carpeted flight of stairs.

He is not typically so uncoordinated, meaning this is either the placebo effect or the very real impact of the cast on his vestibular system. Negotiating stairs in crutches is not exactly uneventful.

The below-ground levels of the mansion are all accessible, but both elevators on the upper levels are located at the entrances to the East, West, and North wings, each nearly two hundred feet from his and Jean’s room. This placement is convenient for the Professor’s habits, but not for Scott’s. He would have to consider that the next time the mansion is remodeled. He doubts the current arrangement is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Institute is technically a business —

“Scott.” Jean calls to him from the foot of the steps. “Please stop thinking about the architecture and tell me I look nice.”

“You look nice.”

She does. In solidarity with Scott’s inability to wear anything other than loose khaki shorts, she had worn a knee-length pleated skirt in a dark color, perhaps blue or green, and an airy white blouse. Glimmering barrettes keep her hair, curled in ringlets, pinned away from her face. Her heels are a similar color, painted nails peeking through the open toe, and she clutches at a purse emblazoned with Cs. Scott attempts to intuit what they stand for and draws a blank.

The tip of Scott’s crutch slips down the last step. A gentle, telepathic grip keeps him from falling.

“You too,” Jean says.

Politely, Scott nods. “Kitty did a good job. On your hair.”

Jean is careful to keep pace with him as they walk through the double doors tucked under the stairs. “She did.” Her arm brushes against Scott’s as she touches her forehead. “I’m not too sure about the barrettes. But other than that.”

“It looks good,” Scott says.

Despite their age difference, both Kurt and Kitty had reacted similarly when they had heard that Scott was attempting to set up a date night within the walls of the mansion. He cannot exactly drive, and the idea of having Jean drive the two of them had made Scott’s skin crawl with embarrassment. There are other solutions, of course, but this had seemed the simplest.

There are plenty of things to do within the walls of the Institute.

“This was a good idea.” Jean parts velvet curtains for him, and patiently accompanies Scott down the ramp and into the theater. “The movie, of course, but. Going on a date. Loosen you up.”

Jean giggles. Scott doubts such a thing is possible.

They sit in the center, two seats out of eighteen occupied. She leans into Scott, looping her arm in his. His crutches lean themselves against the nearest seat.

“I’ll stop, sorry.” Scott gets the impression she would be happy to float him around all day if he would not find it so humiliating. “I’m nervous.”

The admission leaves Scott puzzled. He stares up at the black screen — of a good size, although still much smaller than what he’d expect from a real theatre.

“What movie do you think Kurt picked?”

Scott shrugs. “I just told him no horror.” To this request, Kurt had responded with a lengthy sermon about the role of the horror film in wooing the girl of one’s dreams. Scott has seen enough horror in his life, he had replied. Kurt had dropped the topic.

“Pretty broad.” Jean intertwines their fingers. “I’d bet we’re going to end up watching something in black-and-white.”

“Maybe.”

Carefully, Scott places his hand on Jean’s thigh. She closes her eyes.

It isn’t until more than halfway through the movie that Scott becomes convinced that Jean had completely failed to make him like feet.

She had descended the rickety staircase into the basement of Scott’s mind early that morning. She had wanted some time for everything to settle. She would check in on him in the evening, before their date. This would allow time for her to make tweaks, course correct, or even pull the plug entirely if something had gone wrong. This would also allow Scott time to back out, but neither of them had said this.

Scott had spent most of the morning in conference with the Professor. In the afternoon, he had worked on some new programs for the Danger Room before supervising his own class from the observation deck. Logan had provided direct instruction while Scott’s presence had been relegated to a booming, omniscient voice over loudspeaker. Not a lick of arousal had intruded on him all day.

And yet, when Jean had checked in on him before their date, she had reported no problems.

Scott had watched her. He had listened to her careful explanation as she had placed the ruby-red music box into Scott’s palms. The mind is inherently abstract; it exists solely within the context of the person it belongs to. Manipulating a mind in this subtle, nuanced fashion is much different than attempting to inflict damage or even seize temporary control. Like any other organ, the mind is liable to reject a foreign body.

Hand-over-hand, Jean had guided Scott in exploration of the box’s vintage wind-up key, its gilded embossments, and rounded Chippendale feet. A music box is something which is operated, but does not require continuous interaction to continue functioning. The design is antiquated, the kind of thing noticed in a grandmother’s china cabinet and assumed to have occupied such a space for more than a lifetime. This experience is unfamiliar to Scott, but he understands the point. It is non-threatening.

Gears had clicked under the duress of both his and Jean’s fingers. A single, scarlet high-heeled shoe had risen, rotating delicately on a platform. The Platonic ideal of music had filled Scott’s mind.

Nervous, Jean had laughed. With a bashful twitch of her fingers, the lid had slammed shut.

Scott supposes that would be a part of the metaphor as well.

But now, with Jean’s warmth cradled against his side, nothing is different.

Scott’s gaze remains trained on the screen ahead. Jean had been correct about Kurt’s choice in film: The Apartment, released in 1960 and directed by Billy Wilder. It had won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards after its release, and had been one of twenty-five films included in the Library of Congress National Film Registry a few years back. A certified classic.

Scott had never heard of it. But Kurt, over the speaker system, had enthusiastically promised that they would enjoy the film.

He had been correct, although Scott does find the drama somewhat grating. Cheating, lying, unkept promises, and corporate grovelling. He knows that cheating is so common as to be almost unremarkable as a literary device, but Scott frankly cannot relate to the urge. A man would have to be a slave to his own impulses to become entangled in such a situation.

And that’s exactly what Scott is waiting for, he supposes. Brigades of well-dressed women in sixties-era skirt suits and close-toed pumps march across the screen. Unconscious on the duvet, the lips of the female lead’s kitten heels form twin smiles at the crest of her feet. Scott stares. His heart races. He feels almost nothing.

He does not develop an erection. He does not find himself consumed by thoughts of toes. After his gaze slides up snow-white calves and over the plump curve of her waist, his thoughts return to the plot.

Jean had failed. There is no other explanation.

Her breath is hot on his upper arm. She had grown steadily more relaxed over the course of the film, muscles lengthening as her weight sagged into Scott’s. He considers that his frame of reference may be skewed. As he attempts to recall what he had felt looking at women’s feet prior to this, his memory returns nothing. He had never done so. Feet are objectively disgusting: malodorous, unhygienic, and strangely shaped. Scott would have avoided noticing them at all costs.

On screen, the protagonist is lectured by his neighbor, the doctor. Scott wonders what it even means to have a fetish. The literal definition, Scott is fairly certain, is that desire for the object becomes inextricable from sexual desire. To hae a foot fetish is to have one’s desire for feet become integral to one’s sexual identity.

In disgust, Scott wrinkles his nose.

This is not what Jean experiences. It had been very obvious during Scott’s brief sojourn into her subconscious that the abstraction concept of the foot is incidental to Jean’s sexuality. At their core, her fantasies had revolved around respect, adoration, and the relaxation of inhibition: her needs are anticipated and attended to; she is revered in every inch from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes; Scott gives in to the most chaotic parts of himself for her sake.

The main character strains spaghetti with a tennis racket. Jean laughs, making a comment to Scott which goes completely unheard. Scott only laughs at the joke in delay. He is too preoccupied with the token tragedy that Jean’s innermost desire is to be appreciated by her partner.

“Scott,” Jean prompts.

He clears his throat. “You’re not supposed to talk during a movie.”

Jean rolls her eyes. “We’re the only ones here.”

This is a fair point, although Scott refuses to acknowledge it. He stares at the screen and waits for her to continue. She does not.

Scott slips back into his contemplations. Logically, Jean can only impart on Scott what she herself experiences and understands. She does not have a foot fetish, so Scott should not expect himself to have a foot fetish. Perhaps her attraction only extends to a simple neutrality towards feet. This would be notable in that the average response to feet is disgust, making an individual who simply lacks this response feel abnormal by comparison. A foot is just another body part, after all.

Testing out his theory, Scott visualizes pressing his face to the sole of Jean’s foot. Nauseous displeasure tugs the corners of his lips into a deep frown.

He is not aroused. Air leaves his nostrils in a frustrated huff.

Unfortunately, Scott has officially lost the plot at this point. He coils his arm around Jean’s shoulders, squeezing her tightly. She brings a hand up to his chest, yawning. He is in the process of brainstorming the best way to inform Jean that her strategy must have failed when, as if on cue, she slips off her heels.

Scott watches, head visibly turned, as Jean bends her knees. She curls up under Scott’s arm, the bare soles of her feet braced on the folding seat of the chair.

And, finally, something is different. Unblinking, Scott’s focus remains trained on the dark polish which graces her toenails. He wonders what color Jean had picked. The darkest shades are always difficult for him to tell apart, but there’s a certain absence of muddiness which makes him suspect she had chosen dark red. She looks good in red.

Scott blinks. He experiences his own disgust in delay. Foreign and unfamiliar, that is not the train of thought Scott had expected himself to entertain. He should have thought about how unsanitary it is for Jean to have put her bare feet on a public surface.

Slowly, Scott turns back to the movie. Jean must have noticed him staring, but she doesn’t react. It occurs to Scott that he is still thinking the thoughts that he’s supposed to have had. It is unsanitary for her to put her feet there, and he does experience the coupled twinge of nausea. These thoughts do not feel any less authentic. Scott does not like things which are unsanitary, but he tolerates them. Kissing is also unsanitary, and Scott more than tolerates that.

Minutes pass. Scott breathes. He focuses on the film, piecing together the details he has missed. The female lead confesses to having bad luck in love. Scott concludes she simply has poor taste in men. Jean remains curled up next to him.

Trepidation forces Scott motionless as he waits. Ten minutes pass. No dogged compulsion upchucks from the bowels of Scott’s mind. He watches the movie. When Scott finally returns his attention to the pearls of Jean’s toes, it is by his own choice.

Jean notices. Joints roll beneath her skin her toes curl demurely against the upholstery. The motion is unsettling. Featherlight arousal tickles at his mind. He turns his attention back to the screen.

Just as delicate, Jean presses a kiss into Scott’s shoulder. The plane of her palm drags across his chest, thumb catching so briefly over his nipple he could almost think it an accident. He chews on his lip.

Nothing about this is typical. The tranquil strands of lust forming saccharine curlicues in the pit of his stomach are foreign to him. But the sensation is nice, Scott realizes as the moments wear on. All slack, slow-moving arousal, there is an ease to the sensation Scott finds himself tempted to relax into.

It is the antithesis of how Scott experiences his own sexuality.

As he refocuses on the film, he wonders if this is how Jean experiences her own.

“I’m just like, obsessed with the state of that guy’s apartment. That’s exactly what it’s like living in a little space like that as a young person.”

As if under its own power, the door to their room swings silently closed. Scott hovers in the threshold. Scott wouldn’t know. He’d never lived anywhere else — as an adult, at least.

“You and Misty strained spaghetti through tennis rackets?” Scott asks, for lack of anything better to say.

Jean laughs. “No.”

The answer is sound. Scott struggles to imagine Misty doing something so undignified. But he had never known her very well.

Jean turns to face him, backing away from him slowly. Ankles wobble above thin heels, teeth indenting her lower lip. She stops only when her fingers wrap around the lip of the table.

“We did use hand towels as oven mitts for, like. At least six months, though.”

Wordlessly, Scott nods. That doesn’t seem as incorrect as the tennis racket spaghetti strainer, but once again Scott has no frame of reference. He doesn't cook.

A loaded silence settles over the two of them. Rhythmic clicking fills the emptiness as Jean drums her fingers on the underside of the glass tabletop.

They are supposed to begin now. Scott thrums with nervous dread.

“Are you ready?” Jean asks.

Once again, Scott nods. He licks his lips. She looks excited. He is not going to back out. There had been more than enough time to do so. Jean’s experimental implantation, shelved amongst Scott’s neglected desires, had taken hold. They both know this. There are no excuses. Scott does not wish for there to be any.

Elbows locked, Jean pushes herself onto the glass. Her heels sway back and forth, obverse pendulums. Scott swallows.

“You’re not supposed to sit on the table,” he says.

Jean raises an eyebrow. “Do you want to get on the floor?”

They had planned this all beforehand. In a stilted discussion taking place primarily within the derealized halls of Scott’s mind, Jean had outlined a basic procedure structured around Scott’s most base reactions. He had understood the gist if not the specifics. He imagines himself on his knees at the foot of their bed, one high-heeled shoe braced against his chest.

His pulse thumps. “Maybe,” Scott answers.

It isn’t until Jean blinks at him, expression blank, that Scott realizes the original question had been rhetorical.

Jean had expected him to sit in a chair. The floor is dirty. Scott does not like to be dirty.

“Okay,” she says regardless, taking him at his word. She glances down at his cast. “Can you get on the floor?”

He can.

The bench at the foot of the bed is where Jean ultimately perches. The mattress itself is too high. The tips of her toes barely brush the carpet.

Hands resting on his shoulders, she asks, “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“I’m fine.” Scott palms her knees. “Stop asking.”

She does.

With agitated deliberation, Scott parts her legs. Pleated fabric obscures the apex of her thighs. She usually wears lingerie on special occasions. The pace of Scott’s breath accelerates, but he contains his enthusiasm.

He isn’t headed in that way. He tucks his head in, pressing his narrow lips to the baby-soft skin of her knee. He begins his sojourn in the opposite direction with Jean perfusing the empty hallways of his mind.

Full calves fill the void of Scott’s palms. Her legs are unnaturally smooth. She had shaved that morning. Scott had watched in the reflection of the mirror as he had shaved his own face. She had winked at him. Scott had blushed.

He blushes now, too. The lip of his ruby quartz visor catches on Jean’s skin as he trails kisses down the length of her shin. He circles the bony bump on the inside of her ankle.

Within the halls of Scott’s mind, Jean sings his praises.

In the silence of their bedroom, she merely combs her fingers through his hair.

Thin lips trail behind Scott’s fingers. Anxiety corkscrews in the pit of his stomach. The lipline of her heel snaps from her foot with enough pressure. Scott pauses, lips hesitating at the boundary between ankle and foot, and breathes in.

Lust lumbers down the stairs. Muscles rippling just below skin, it rips at the wallpaper and tears sconces from their mounts. Scott’s disgust and desire take the form of growling and hissing, a war waged in miniature beneath the trembling chandelier.

Scott wants to continue. Sweat pricks at his brow. The image of himself as a paragon for mutantkind creaks in threat of collapse: no amount of ardor is enough to make Scott re-conceptualize who he is. One cannot both be a role model and kiss feet, but he wants to please Jean. He wants to do this for her. Although he knows it exists only at Jean’s behest, there is some part of him that wants to do this for himself.

Jean crouches before him. Fingers comb through his hair. Vibrant green eyes blink slowly back at him.

Shaking, Scott breathes as the beast finally grows docile. They descend in tandem, it slinking down the stairs as Scott pecks the warm crown of Jean’s foot.

“Good boy,” she whispers.

In a frenzied spasm, Scott’s spine attempts to spring from his frame. His lips part, tongue coasting over skin. The heel slides fully off her foot, clattering to the floor as Scott mouths at the swell of each knuckle.

Jean reclines. The bed’s ledge behind her acts in mirror to the pitch of the stairs. A deep rumbling reverberates behind the cracked door of the basement. Growling or purring, Scott doesn’t know.

Hugging the corner of Jean’s big toe, the callus is rough against Scott’s tongue. Revulsion is accompanied by a rush of saliva pooling on the floor of his mouth.

“Sorry,” Jean mutters.

Scott catches the back of her ankle when she tries to pull away. He’s hard.

But it’s for Jean. Ribs rattle around his heaving lungs. Compliant lips are preceded by obstinate teeth. Dull nails scrape from heel to ball. A disembodied tongue pillages each crack and crease of her sole. It is disgusting, and Jean made Scott like it. He sucks at the pearl of each digit.

Wrapped around her littlest toe, Jean owns him.

The thought leaves Scott throbbing.

Laughter, chiming like bells. “You asked me to.”

And Scott had allowed her to reshape him. The sour taste of sweat tickles his tastebuds. Jean’s pleasures, desires, and needs impersonate Scott’s own. He laves the bottom of her foot. Jean is in control. She lounges on the steps which herald Scott’s shame, thighs parted and hair let loose, while Scott lies prostrate at her feet. He worships her as nothing but her toy.

A moan leaves Scott as his hair is pulled.

“Scott,” Jean says.

The tone is frustrated and urgent. It is not the first time she has spoken. Disowned palms are still clutching at her. Shame pulses, trapped in a choking erection. It is not until Jean speaks again, cool fingers on his cheeks, that Scott understands the appendages belong to him.

“Unzip. Please.”

Sweat tacks his skin. He fumbles with the button and doesn’t bother with the zipper. His cock leaps up, slapping desperately against his shirt as both shorts and briefs are lifted carefully over it.

Jean cradles his cheeks. Although she does not see it, she feels it when Scott meets her gaze. “Very good boy.”

It twitches. Scott swallows. Jean did this to him. Jean —

She leans back, carefully lifting her skirt. Frustrated loss fills him as she does so; he has not even begun to worship her other foot.

This feeling fades as lace-patterned panties peek out at him. Scott leans in, hands sliding up Jean’s thighs.

She stops him, clicking her tongue. “No.”

Brow furrowed, Scott pauses. He wraps his fist around the base of his dick, squeezing in preparation to stroke himself. He can’t handle much stimulation, but for Jean —

“No.”

Jean nudges his hand away with one high-heeled foot. Scott holds his breath. The gentle, lazy touch of Jean’s lust that he had experienced in the theater has reached a fever pitch. He struggles to pull his gaze away from her most foreign of digits crowded into that open-toed peekaboo.

A finger hooks under his chin. Scott stares up at Jean, cast in shades of red. Her hair is mussed, her lips swollen. Scott’s brow furrows.

“But — “ he starts, because this had been the plan. Scott will kiss her feet, and then he will eat her out. He will be allowed to stroke himself if he wants or Jean will use her mouth on him if he needs, and then —

“Just watch.” Once again, Jean hikes up her skirt. “Don’t touch. Just watch.”

Anxiety congests the air. This had not been the plan.

But then Jean hooks her thumbs in the lacy straps of her panties. Her knees kiss as that little scrap of fabric slides down her legs, Scott’s vision eclipsed by thighs and calves and ankles. The elastic waistband catches on her toes before tangling in the heel of her remaining shoe. Her skirt hem is shepherded upwards by her wrist.

She is dripping.

Scott swallows.

The head of her clit peeks out from beneath her fingers. Points of painful pressure bear down on Scott: teeth on his lip, fingers on his thighs, humiliation on his shoulders. He can’t breathe. He’s not supposed to be watching this.

And yet, Jean says, “Look,” when Scott glances away.

Scott does. The halls of his mind are lit ablaze with self-consciousness.

Fingers sift through strands of hair. They are Jean’s in Scott’s, pulling firmly enough to send sparks scuttling down his spine, just like she does when he uses his mouth. Scott’s head rests between her knees instead of her thighs.

It isn’t that different. It shouldn’t be, at least.

But Scott’s cheeks still burn as he watches. A twitch of Jean’s fingers both teases at her clit and leaves the basement door swinging on its hinges. The beast slinks submissively behind her, boxes toppled, papers scattered, phantom fingers rifling through the files of Scott’s thoughts. The wind of her sigh whips through wire-latticed shelves.

“What do you want, Scott?”

Jean glistens. Scott resists the urge to lick her, his dick bobbing immodestly between Jean’s feet. Beyond lost, Scott’s plot is unrecoverable: he doesn’t know what he wants. He was supposed to bury his face between her thighs, breathe her in while she fills him up, hold her hips in his hands as she cums beneath his tongue. That had been the plan.

Instead, Jean rolls hood of her clit up and makes Scott stare into the wanton blaze of his own desire.

Uninvited thoughts flash shutter-quick through the lens of his mind, Jean’s toes curled around the head of his cock, her pointed tongue circling his nipples, her pussy convulsing around him as he fucks ferociously into her just like Logan would, Logan, hard and fast and uninhibited, so completely satiated he cannot even recall the burn of his own hyperstimulation —

“You want to fuck me?”

Jean’s fingers come to a halt. Her folds drape down, curtains osculating at her entrance. Scott’s mouth waters.

He nods. He has never wanted anything so badly in his entire life.

This is hyperbole, of course. Scott knows, somewhere deep in the labyrinthine corridors of his mind, that he has wanted many things throughout his life. Most of them were strict necessities, and nearly all of them were certainly more important than this.

But it isn’t until Jean grabs him by the chin, forces his gaze upward, and calmly speaks the word, “No,” that Scott is able to put a finger on it.

Denial incinerates him.

He grasps helplessly at Jean’s ankles, watching in rigid shock as Jean slides two fingers into herself. Her legs tremble in Scott’s grip, toes curling under the pressure of her own pleasure, and all at once Scott realizes with an excruciating intimacy that this isn’t just him or her, but the two of them together, lust-drunk walls demolished and reconstructed to approximate the intertwined shape of their two bodies as one, a terrifying chimera of beliefs and hopes and desires, a frankenstein forged around a skeleton of need and stitched together with wanton vulnerability.

Scott attempts to voice the sensation. The uncouth and inarticulate sounds which break from his throat frighten him back into silence. A panicked animal, he sinks his teeth into Jean’s thigh. She jumps.

A hand tugs at his hair. Hips cant into empty space. Heel hitched on the edge of the bench, Jean fucks herself.

“You want to cum?”

Once again, Scott nods. The image of him and Jean as one trembles and shatters. Caged within the call to freedom, Scott shuns the indulgence of flesh and prostrates himself as a servant. The relationship, the group, the culture, the ideology, the world, the woman herself —

Because this is for Jean.

Relieved, he breathes.

“Beg, Scott.”

“Please.”

The response is automatic. He manages to suck the need, the want, and the passion from his voice. Jean’s frown lasts only a moment. She throws herself over the foot of the bed, resigning herself to the sovereign throne, spreading her knees as she presses one bare sole to the head of Scott’s dick.

He moans. The sound is jarring, incongruent with a self-concept Scott can barely conceptualize. He wants to forget it as much as he wants to right himself into its phantom shape.

Instead, he straddles the middle. He grips at Jean’s ankle, steadying her lovely body as he squeezes himself over the ball of her foot and between the gorge of her toes, the bunched skin beneath his head expanding and retracting. It is disgusting and delightful and Jean must love it, must need it, the way Scott humiliates himself for her, watching her fuck herself and knowing that this is something he cannot have, knowing that he’s not —

Scott shudders when he cums.

Laughter fills the air. Wet fingers pump at Jean’s clit. She lifts her foot as soon as Scott releases it, raising it just high enough to see without peeping through Scott’s rose-tinted vision.

“Good boy,” she says, and cums.

Jean strips him down in the aftermath.

The statement applies both figuratively and literally. She snatches the music box from Scott’s shelves in silence and chatters incessantly as one pointed finger both severs and reconstructs the line of atoms which hold the seam of his shorts together while they stand on the tiled floor of the bathroom.

The silence is punctuated by jangly little nothings: there we go, hop on in, hey handsome, let me get that for you. She washes his hair. Silent, Scott allows her.

He doesn’t speak until the blank emptiness of the ceiling fills his vision. It’s the emptiness that makes his thoughts return.

“So what was your review?” she asks.

Shampoo-scented, Jean’s damp hair bridges the gap between them. Anxiety collapses into Scott, box-springs creaking as he welcomes it home. He hadn’t even noticed its absence.

“I like doing things for you.”

“I know.” Jean turns. Fingers crawl across Scott’s chest. “But how do you feel?”

Empty.

“It was fine.” The traumatized child of a divorce between fantasy and reality, Scott recalls the memory of what they’d just done as if watching a pornographic movie. Foot in mouth, dick on foot. The distant burn of humiliation. “I like doing things for you.”

A hum. “I changed the plan.”

“Yes,” Scott acknowledges. She had. She had wanted to. She doesn’t usually talk this much. “Why are you acting weird?”

Brow furrowed, Jean stares. “I’m not the one being weird.”

She does not sound convinced. Scott, of course, can never know for sure. Of the two of them, she is the telepath. She knows Scott inside and out. Thoughts, ideas, and feelings are the tools of her craft. Meanwhile, Scott lies in bed with his fiance and wonders how the work on the Blackbird is going.

“You think we’re gonna do it again?” Jean asks.

Carefully, Scott extends his arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Silence reigns. Scott imagines Jean on her throne, legs crossed at the knees and bright red heels bobbing. Numb, Scott feels nothing.

“Did you like it?” he asks.

“I did. Quite a lot, actually.” Jean laughs. Lips split in a smile against Scott’s bare shoulder. “I wish you’d let yourself enjoy it more. Let loose a little.”

The expression is strangely vulnerable. Jean must already know what Scott is going to say.

“That’s not the way I am.”

Warm air ghosts across Scott’s cheek.

“I know, Summers.” A moment later, Jean’s lips follow suit. “I know.”

Chapter Text

“I mean, it’s going well enough.”

Jean’s voice crackles over the line. Scott grunts.

“Bush is — you know.”

The empty silence which follows does all the talking.

“Yeah,” Scott agrees.

He doesn’t elaborate. His thoughts should not be elaborated upon for a variety of reasons, including Jean’s current location, the legislation which had been pushed through a few months back, and for the sake of brevity. A year out, Scott is still bitter about the election.

“Charles was worried about how this would go.“

Jean pauses, allowing the conversation to lull. Scott stares down at his chessboard. The pieces refuse to stay in place bounding between tiles in the eye of Scott’s mind.

“But honestly, everyone’s more worried about weapons of mass destruction. Or anthrax. Which is both expected and unexpected, I guess.”

Scott understands. He has shaped his life around mitigating the destruction which could be caused by his own deadly, lawless powers. He struggles to imagine himself in the Professor’s shoes, or even Jean’s, possessing the ability to psychologically manipulate another without even the intention to do so.

“Yeah,” he says.

“But the reminder that we’re not a threat, you know. Not across the board at least. That’s helpful, I think.”

Scott nods. He appreciates her optimism just as he appreciates the speed and fluidity with which public ire shifts from one scapegoat to another. The Professor is not a fool. An unnamed emotion fizzes in Scott’s gut, threatening to explode in a highly pressurized environment.

Lost in himself, by the time it occurs to Scott that Jean cannot see him, she has already overtaken him with a sigh. “I suppose the X-Men are domestic, if nothing else.”

“Logan’s Canadian,” Scott replies.

A pause follows. Scott taps his foot. He has things he’ll need to do after this, but Jean hates it when he rushes her on the phone.

“And Ororo, Piotr, Kurt…” Jean trails off. “I meant the organization.”

“The Professor’s British.”

Another long pause follows. The kids are watching a movie in the lounge, Scott can hear. He suspects no one had checked to ensure it was appropriate. And he had offered to cover Jean’s class tomorrow — art, of all the useless things — which Scott still needs to prepare for, although the longer he thinks about it the more he comes to believe that his attempts to lead the painting lesson Jean had left may be more detrimental to the students than no lesson at all.

“Touche,” Jean says. “I think he does just end up feeling like fancy American, though.”

Scott says nothing. This is ridiculous sentiment. He recognizes that Jean is attempting to make a joke. He exhales.

“Speaking of, did you hear about George Harrison?”

None of these things have anything to do with one other. But Scott does not say this, and from nearly three hundred miles away, Jean couldn’t lift the information from his mind even if she wanted to.

“Yes,” Scott answers. He taps his foot.

Perhaps the lack of intuitive communication is why he hates talking on the phone with her.

“It was sad.”

Scott says nothing. An anxious storm brews in his chest. “Yeah.”

A slow, crackled sigh. “I miss you.”

Static vulnerability leaves Scott’s arm hair standing straight up. The clouds dissipate. “I miss you, too.”

“Do you like hearing about your fiance’s exploits as a lobbyist?”

Scott’s lips part. He furrows his brow.

“Yes?” he answers, a futile guess at the correct response. He doesn’t understand what Jean is even asking him.

Jean laughs. “Not really what I imagined doing with my life when Chuck showed up at my parents’ house. Telling me we’d use our powers to save the world.”

A flinch. Scott hates when she refers to the Professor like that, a habit she’s certainly picked up from Logan. But Scott doesn’t want to think about Logan.

Eyes screwed shut, he plucks at each of her words one-by-one, and conjures the image of her in 1985. With two years on Scott’s twelve, cradled in broad-shouldered blazers and elevated a half-head above him by her blocky heeled boots, she had been unmistakably mature. His heartbeat still stutters in sympathy with the child who lives in his memory, besotted by shy smiles and the ozone scent of hairspray.

The ensuing months had been the first time Scott had ever cared about what he wore. The Professor’s adoption had marked the first time Scott had ever been allowed to care about what he wore. He still remembers walking into that department store in Moira’s tow, shades of red under glaring lights and blaring music, perfume vapors sticking in his sinuses. Denim jackets, striped polos, and thigh-hugging shorts had hunted Scott, hot on his heels, as he had locked himself in the changing room. His reprieve had been broken by Moira’s stern Irish tone through the door. Scott had never so thoroughly understood the cage of freedom.

“Yeah.”

Jean waits. Fabric rustles on the other end of the line. Panic brewing in his chest, Scott had refused to emerge from the dressing room. Moira had brought him pieces one-by-one in a huff, and slowly, Scott had exchanged a wardrobe of ratty jeans and pill-ridden pull-overs for acid-washed denim and tennis cardigans.

The look had not impressed Jean, he recalls.

“Feel like I’m talking to myself here, Scott.”

It had been the 80s. Nothing had been fashionable, but this is only obvious in retrospect. “Hm?”

“What are you thinking about?”

Surprised, the novelty of the question rolls over Scott. A beat passes wherein his thoughts refuse to coalesce. Eventually, he simply says, “1985.”

Jean laughs. “What?”

Mouth dry, Scott swallows. This isn’t usually the kind of thing he has to put into words. “I was thinking about when, after you moved in, and you took me shopping. For clothes.”

A long hum. “I remember. You were wearing all that frumpy stuff Moira bought you.”

Scott nods. He remembers being fixated by tips of Jean’s boots through the gap in bottom of the changing room door as he’d stripped off his shirt and pants. Despite his best efforts, at thirteen had been almost completely unable to reign in his own suggestive thoughts.

Three hundred miles away, Jean reads him like a book. “You had such a big crush on me.”

“Jean.”

“What?”

Scott’s cell threatens to slip through sweaty fingers. The memory is equal parts humiliating and exhilarating. At thirteen, Scott had barely known about sex. He hadn’t even figured out how to masturbate. His desires had been a jumbled mess with neither a shape nor an outlet, and Jean’s involuntary voyeurism had only aggravated the situation. His entire body had burned red when, from the other side of bolted sheet of plastic, Jean had giggled and muttered, cute.

“Are you trying to say you didn’t have a crush on me? Because we both know that’s not true.”

“No,” Scott says.

A lump twists in his throat. He had always had a crush on Jean.

“You were so cute. Just this handsome little guy who couldn’t stop thinking about — “

“Jean,” Scott cuts her off. “You’re embarrassing me.”

More laughter, not mean-spirited. Scott’s cheeks burn regardless.

“Why?” she asks. Scott’s chest puffs up, preparing to respond with a biting comment about how being laughed at is not reassuring, when she finishes her thought. “It’s true.”

Scott doesn’t know what gives it away. Whether the information is contained in her tone, his knowledge of her, or his own memory of their interactions as teens, Scott realizes with a jolt of surprise that she is being flirtatious.

“It was rude,” Scott says. “I was, I mean.”

“I liked it.”

Scott blinks. He distinctly remembers sitting on the little bench in the gardens shortly after they had first begun dating. Scott had carefully laid his hand on top of Jean’s. At the time, it had been the kind of contact that made his heart race and stomach twist itself into knots. Unable to handle his own excitement, Scott’s mind had run amok — and Jean had turned to him and asked, with an excruciating deliberateness, Scott, do you want to have sex?

When, after a flabberghasted minute, Scott had finished rambling about how they were teenagers and that was not appropriate, she had smiled woodenly at him and continued, Then please stop thinking about my breasts.

In the present, a gravelly creaking reverberates through Scott’s skull. He is grinding his teeth, he realizes, and intentionally relaxes his jaw. “You definitely didn’t.”

Jean hums. “I mostly liked it.”

“It was embarrassing.” He hadn’t been able to look Jean in the eye for nearly a week after that. Ironically, she is the only person who could have noticed such a thing. “I had no self-control.”

“Maybe I like that.”

The maybe isn’t necessary. Scott already knows that she does. He has seen it, in the twisting caves of her mind. The same darkness that colors her voice creeps its way into Scott’s.

“You don’t want to see me with no self-control,” he says.

Jean laughs. “Oh, don’t I?”

The bottom of Scott’s stomach drops out.

The terminal velocity of an adult man is about one hundred twenty miles per hour. An aloof problem presented in a physics text given to him by the Professor, the maximum speed of a freely falling object in relationship to the drag of the medium it falls through.

Scott’s eyes burn. There is nothing so uncontrollable as death.

Jean sighs. “I’m curled up in bed. In my nightgown.”

It takes Scott a long moment to snap back to reality. The memory slips through his fingers, leaving him disoriented.

“Where are you?”

“Uh, in our room. At the table.”

Scott answers simply. It isn’t until a breathy silence encroaches that Scott begins to consider the question had been rhetorical. Only a few moments had passed, he thought, but perhaps it had been longer —

“What if I told you I was wearing those panties you got me for my birthday last year.”

Jean doesn’t sound frustrated. She hums, her tone light, and allows the call to lapse back into unworried silence. She pauses as if allowing Scott to contemplate his response.

Dumbfounded, his jaw flaps open like a fish. Under normal circumstances, he would say that he is happy she is getting some use out of them. The thought is anticlimactic, and Jean would not be speaking to him with such a loaded tone if she had only wanted to hear a simple platitude.

Instead, Scott must be expected to say that that she is beautiful. Except he can’t see her. She wants him to ask why she’d brought those on a trip without him; she is trying to start a fight. Ororo had been the one to suggest Scott buy her lingerie for her birthday, and that the joy of such a gift was that it was pleasurable for both of them even if it fell outside the bounds of Scott’s character. The point had been to ensure Jean felt desired. She had just turned thirty. Jean is about to tell him that the gift had been a stupid idea; Ororo knows nothing about their relationship. Except Jean would never say that so directly, as much as Scott sometimes wishes that she would, and Ororo is her best friend, and there is no reason to prompt such a discussion months after the fact —

A soft, breathy noise sputters over the line. “You’re so handsome, Scott.”

Wind rattles the windows. Inappropriate arousal coils in the pit of his stomach. “You’re beautiful,” he answers, almost entirely by reflex.

More silence follows. Scott is not disappointed. He is certain that was the correct response, but on the heels of his relief comes the unwelcome image of Jean tangled up in unfamiliar sheets, fingertips dragging lazy circles over her stomach, blinking slowly as the hem of her nightgown rides up over her thighs.

Scott swallows. The thought is ridiculous. Jean does not take her nightgown when she travels.

Another thoughtless little high-pitched noise drifts over the line. Jean must be tired, wanting to stay on the phone because she wants to talk to Scott. Guilt fills Scott to the brim.

Excruciating seconds tick by. Scott has no idea how to get the conversation back on track. His temples throb.

“What are you thinking about?” Scott asks. He has nothing else to say.

A few beats pass, marked by the nervous drumming of Scott’s fingers on the lip of the table. Jean lets out a nervous laugh. “You really wanna know?”

Scott pauses. She’s acting strangely.

“Yes,” Scott says. Hesitantly, he continues, “That’s why I asked.”

“You and Logan. Actually. Is what I was thinking about.”

Air pounds against the inside of Scott’s lungs, making a forceful escape on the back of the question, “Like. Sexually?”

Discomfort perfuses the radio waves linking their two phone speakers.

“Um,” Jean finally responds. “Yeah?”

Baffled, Scott asks, “Why?”

Another laugh. She is nervous. Scott’s fingers drum in his chessboard in sympathy.

“I don’t know. You’re both attractive.” The click of Jean’s tongue, perhaps sucking her teeth or licking her lips. She sighs. Scott imagines her trying to loosen up. “And I like the idea of you just…giving in. To feeling good. Even though you know it’s wrong.”

Her voice grows more and more coarse as she continues, low-pitched and gravelly.

“Not that it’s wrong.”

Not as speechless as he would like, Scott replies, “No. It’s definitely wrong.”

The sentiment oozes up from his gut, an acidic sludge eating at the grout that holds the floor tiles in place. The chandelier trembles, rooks scuttling forward on the diagonal and pawns crawling shyly backward. It’s the same disgust that accompanies the phantom shape of Jean’s toes between his lips, but stronger and more monstrous in scope.

Scott does not have the chance to scrutinize the shape of this emotion before Jean continues.

“I know you’d never cheat on me.”

Scott’s brain skips into double-time as he attempts to follow the conversation. That is not what he had meant.

“And I know you like being bad.”

A fuse blows. The lights flicker out. “Huh?”

Laughter follows, pitched at a cackle. As the backup generator rumbles to life, Scott briefly wonders if Jean is mocking him.

“Oh, come on. Everything you like is like that. Break the rules just a little, so long as it doesn’t have to be your fault.”

Scott’s brow furrows. He glances back at the window. No rain.

“Do I?”

He doesn’t. Jean is making a joke. There is no other explanation.

Should Scott be laughing? Jean is not. Her voice vibrates on the back of each breath, nearly a moan. Her chest heaves in his mind’s eye. Teeth pluck loose skin from the back of his lip. Scott squeezes his thighs together and tries to ignore the way he is throbbing. He needs to focus and figure out what the hell is happening in this conversation —

“God.” Another noise crackles in Scott’s ear. It sounds even more like a moan. Scott chastizes himself for his filthy thoughts. “I love what’s gotten into you recently.”

Scott blinks.

“Are you touching yourself?”

All at once, every muscle in Scott’s body locks up. “What?” he hisses. “Are you?”

“Um.” Embarrassed, Jean’s voice is just as tight as Scott’s. “Yeah. We’re having phone sex?”

“I’m. You. We. I don’t.” She didn’t say that. How is he supposed to have known? Heat creeps down his neck before descending even further, his chest breaking out into a blistering itch. “You’ll be back in two days.”

A beat passes before Jean responds. “What, so you can’t enjoy yourself because I’ll be back in two days?”

“No, I just.” Words slip through Scott’s mind like a sieve. “I don’t need to.”

More silence follows. Scott realizes, shame searing the corridors of his mind, that had not been the correct thing to say. He doesn’t know what the right thing is and in the moment he does not care. Humiliation burns him. He wants out of this conversation.

“Because of.” Scott swallows. “The Patriot Act.”

Jean breathes. In retrospect, Scott should have been able to discern the difference between her titillated little breaths from before and the shocked ones that rattle the Nokia speaker now.

“Scott,” Jean says, slowly. “The United States government doesn’t give a flying fudge if I masturbate in the White House.”

Logically, Scott knows this is true. But the words being brought into the light of conversation make him want to hang up the phone.

“It took a lawsuit for anyone to give a shit about Clinton, Scott, I don’t think — “

“Jean,” Scott interrupts. He bends at the waist, his skull sandwiched between his phone and one broad palm just as his dick is between his stomach and his thighs. He has never wanted Jean to be able to read his mind so badly. “I don’t. Do that.”

Steely, Jean doesn’t give an inch. “Yes, you do.”

She knows. She had probably been aware when Scott had first figured out how to. She had probably known exactly when he was, salacious thoughts emanating from him every time his grip on his own mind slipped, Scott’s sexual impulses impaling the solitude of her mind as Jean had simply tried to go about living her life.

Scott does. But he does not like to.

He says nothing. They both know this.

“You can, um. Keep going, though.”

Disappointed, Jean sighs. “Scott.”

Crushed beneath the weight of his own humiliation, Scott lashes out. “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t even do anything.”

She is angry for the fact that Scott has done nothing. She cannot make him masturbate. This is not what she wants, Scott knows, but he finds the deeper layer even more insidious. She wants him to want to.

But this is simply not who Scott is.

“Even if you hadn’t just embarrassed the hell out of me for thinking we were having a nice time together,” she snaps, “asking me to masturbate while you just sit there like a log is — ridiculous. And uncomfortable. And weird.”

Scott blinks. Of course he had embarrassed her.

“You’re stressed,” he says. “You should.”

He probably would not mind listening to her. He wishes she had simply asked him at the beginning of the conversation. He still would have said no, but then they would at least not be fighting.

A groan of frustration hits his eardrums. “Did you not hear a word I just said?”

Frowning, Scott furrows his eyebrows. She isn’t being fair. His erection has subsided as well, which should be a relief, but instead of arousal a cocktail of helpless frustration races through his veins.

“I was listening to you.” The words scrape through clenched teeth. As much as Scott wants to, he does not even dare think of telling her to calm down.

“Okay,” Jean sighs. She is not accepting his statement but attempting to convince herself of its veracity. “It’s just — it’s weird now. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

Leg itching beneath his cast, Scott stares down at his chessboard. The pieces remain stubbornly stationary.

“I love you,” she says.

Silence encroaches. Scott begs the pieces to move across the checkered tiles in the foyer of his mind.

An angry sigh cuts him off.

“Oh,” Scott says. “You, too.”

The line clicks dead.

With his own angry sigh, Scott drops his phone onto the table. The plastic clatters frantically onto the glass. Scott peels his visor off and digs his fingers into his eyes until the building pressure in his eyeball stimulates his long-dormant cones. Saturated blues, greens, and purples erupt on the back of his eyelids.

Eyes screwed shut, Scott straps the ruby quartz visor which imprisons his optic blasts back onto his face. The arms settle into the permanent canals lining the top of his ear. The ache is familiar. Crutchless, he shuffles over to Jean’s dresser and opens the topmost drawer.

Neatly-stacked rows of panties and bras stare back at him. Expression grim, Scott fingers waistbands and straps until he feels scratchy lace on his fingers. Its translucent white fabric glares daggers back at Scott.

He had thought it was pink when he bought it.

Scott isn’t good at this. He doubts he ever will be.

As he collapses face-first onto the foot of the mattress, grime-ridden cast dangling haphazardly over the edge, Scott desperately misses the shape of Jean’s foot in his mouth solely for the brief moment wherein he had thought nothing.

“You seem depressed.”

Scott stares down at his hands. The dark whorls embedded in the marble countertop are a converse mirror of the cream corkscrews spiraling slowly in his coffee. The contrast, light on dark and dark on light, is strangely beautiful.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were praying.”

Shoulders hunched, Scott’s focus slips. The solid white ring of his mug doubles. Elbow perched on the island, Kurt smirks.

“Didn’t think you were talking to me,” Scott says. He blinks forcefully, wrinkling his forehead in the process. This is the closest he can get to rubbing his eyes. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.” Kurt’s tail lashes playfully about the back of his head.

Scott tracks its movements from behind his visor. The silence elongates. For lack of anything else to do, Scott takes a sip of his coffee. Discomfort crawls down his spine whenever he looks Kurt in the eye.

“You should come to the gym later,” Kurt says, eventually. It is Tuesday, right on schedule. Scott hasn’t been in weeks. “It would be nice to have — “

“I’m not depressed,” Scott interjects. Kurt stares at him, expression unreadable. Scott is supposed to be the one in charge. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Kurt nods, sagely, like he understands. He doesn’t understand anything.

“You should come — “

“My leg is broken.”

“Your arms are not.”

Kurt is smiling. Scott resists the urge to scowl.

“It would be good teambuilding. You are the one who is always talking about teambuilding.” Knees bent, Kurt leans back and presses an imaginary barbell up from his chest. “Can do some bench pressing. Bicep curl. Whatever this one is.”

Kurt contorts his body into a strange shape, squatting at a ninety degree angle and leaning back to wave a pair of imaginary dumbbells in front of his chest. The gesture is athletic, but Scott has no idea which exercise he is imitating.

“I have things to do.”

Jean is going to be back tomorrow. He still hasn’t prepared to cover her class or steeled himself for the conversation that will inevitably occur upon her return. Or the absence of a conversation, equally as likely, which Scott suspects may be even worse.

“Like mope around the kitchen?”

“I’m not moping,” Scott lies. “Everything is fine. I’m fine. I’m not depressed.”

Kurt smacks him on the shoulder. Under the force of it, Scott rocks forward. It takes Scott a beat to realize that the gesture is meant to be comforting.

“Keep the church in the village, mein freund. It will just be for fun, yes?”

Scott squints. “What?”

Kurt laughs. Sharp teeth flash from between blue lips. Scott resents how inexplicably easy-going he is. He would have simply had the phone sex.

Scott trips over this thought, vocal cords clamping down as he attempts to sip his coffee. He reels wildly, trying to catch his balance. His tongue burns.

“I guess that one does not translate. It means, like, do not react too much or be too angry. Do not make something bigger than it needs to be.”

“Okay,” Scott says. There is a phrase like this in English which he cannot recall. Frustration draws his shoulders into a hard, thick line.

“Good.” Kurt pats him on the shoulder again. “Then I will see you in thirty minutes at the gym.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he leaves.

Silent, Scott turns back to his mug. Through a focused gaze, its lip forms a perfect circle.

“Wow, that is it! We are getting your arms completely ripped up.”

With his head hanging over the bench, the inverted image of Logan’s boots sits in the center of Scott’s visual field.

“Keep going. You can do it.”

Scott pushes the barbell up from his chest once more. It’s only 175 — not even Scott’s full body weight. Logan knows this. With his head just outside of Scott’s line of sight, he chuffs.

What he thinks does not matter. Fabric gathers at his ankles. He is twelve full inches shorter than Scott, and cannot even bother to wear pants that fit. Scott does not care.

“One more! Come on, chef.”

Scott scowls. It’s only eight reps. Kurt isn’t even properly spotting, instead hovering to Scott’s right and cheerleading. His chest tightens. Logan’s biceps leave the sleeves of his shirt straining. Scott’s tremble. His abs lock up, sweat dripping down his temples. The barbell kisses his collar.

For a split second, the reality of the struggle sets in. Scott imagines himself folding under this weight, choking; Kurt trying to lift it off of him, failing; Logan lumbering over to lift the weight from Scott’s chest, smirking; his crotch hovering only a few inches from Scott’s face, gloating. There would be the scent of musk and sweat, the dead silence of judgement, and the internal burn of humiliation.

His neck seizes. In reality, Logan is staring down at him with a smirk already slicked across his face.

Adrenaline swoops through the pit of Scott’s stomach. He pushes the bar up.

Kurt’s delicate fingers guide the bar into place. Tension radiates down Scott’s arms as he clings to it. Logan is still staring. His eyebrows hike up his forehead.

Scott stands. The speed of the motion knocks him off-balance. Jean had been thinking about him and Logan while she had touched herself. She had been thinking about Logan, stocky and strong, smirking at Scott.

Kurt slaps his butt.

“Great job, man.” Kurt beams. “No homo.”

Every joint in Scott’s body locks up. He hits the bench with an audible smack.

A few feet ahead, Piotr pauses in the middle of a deadlift. Sweat slicks his forehead, well-muscled chest heaving as he breathes. His gaze penetrates through the ruby quartz visor and directly into his soul.

“Did I do something wrong?” Kurt asks. Behind him, Logan laughs. Ororo, in the middle of a set of squats, only shakes her head. “That is what ze kinder do to each other.”

Scott has seen that. He sucks in a deep breath and tries to think of nothing before he responds, “You cannot do that to me.”

“Kurt.” A barbell much heavier than Scott’s clatters to the floor, metal plates clanking against one another. Piotr’s nipples form circular embossments on his lycra muscle shirt. “You cannot slap butt in America. People are going to think you are one of the fruit loops.”

An intrusive thought. Scott is still hung up on Jean, Logan’s disproportionate shape, and his own physical shortcomings.

Head tilted to the side, Kurt’s lips curl into a curious frown. “Like the cereal?”

Arms crossed, Piotr shakes his head. “No. It is a polite euphemism for,” he says, pausing to lean down and bring a single hand up to his mouth as if to block the projection of his whisper, “faggot.”

Piotr’s voice, rich and heavily accented, carries across the gym. Staring at the wall, Scott’s stomach drops straight into his ass.

“Oh,” Kurt responds. “No, that is why you add the no homo. If you slap butt, but you do not say the no homo after, then it is homosexual. Like this.”

Scott watches, completely speechless, as Kurt raises his hand and proceeds to strike Piotr’s backside. A half-second before the blow lands, Piotr’s skin ripples into metal. A dull clang follows.

“Kreizkruzefix,” Kurt hisses. Doubled over, he clutches at his hand.

Boomingly, Piotr laughs. “I see you are not saying it. I’m thinking this means I have to beat you up now.”

Scott, jaw slack as he stares up at Piotr, says nothing. It is a joke. Piotr is laughing. Logan is, too, somewhere in the background. No one is going to beat anyone up. That is the joke.

Kurt squawks. Sulfur-scented smoke fills the gym. Scott coughs, waving his hand about his face in an attempt to fan the fumes away. He is unsurprised when Kurt reappears perched on Piotr’s shoulders.

“You can try, but I do not think you will have much luck in catching me.”

Piotr pitches forward, attempting to shake Kurt off. Thick blue digits cling to Piotr’s shoulders. When Piotr finally manages to grab Kurt by the ankle and Kurt teleports once again only to reappear on the rack above the bench, Scott finally speaks up.

“Stop,” he says. “This isn’t the danger room.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Kurt swings down, grinning boyishly at Scott.

Piotr is smiling, too. The tension in Scott’s shoulders refuses to unknot. The tiles lining the floor of Scott’s mind creak in restrained agony. He ignores them.

“Leave ‘im alone, Petey.” A thick dumbbell clasped in one hirsute hand, Logan grins cruelly as he continues, “If anyone here’s a pansy, it’s Summers.”

Something rumbles beneath the surface, a memory just out of reach. Scott rejects it.

“Mind your own business, Logan.”

Scott clutches at his solar plexus. Nausea swells in him.

With a scoff, Logan says, “You got it, limpy,” before returning to his set.

Kurt continues, unperturbed. “Really though, I do not think you are supposed to say faggot, mein freund.”

Scott attempts to pin Logan beneath the weight of his gaze, head craned uncomfortably over his own shoulder. Logan’s arm moves up and down, biceps and deltoids expanding and contracting beneath his skin. The weights he uses are tungsten, custom-ordered and astronomically expensive. Scott had been the one to speak to the manufacturer. Over two hundred pounds, he lifts more in a single fist than Scott had been able to bench.

“It is like a swear word,” Kurt says.

Scott tracks the movement of the weight. Up and down, rising and falling, the flick of a light switch or the movement of the tides.

“Am I supposed to be punishing the children when they say faggot?” Piotr asks.

Logan smirks, eyebrows hiking up his forehead.

He knows.

“I’m not sure,” Kurt says. “I do not think so?”

Quick as a whip, Scott turns away. Logan cannot know. It isn’t possible.

“If it is a swear word, why are we not punishing the children for saying it?” Piotr asks.

Scott barely listens. He stares down at his own spread knees. Is he acting weird? He feels like he is acting weird. He needs to behave normally. No one will suspect anything if he behaves normally.

There isn’t anything to suspect.

“Perhaps we are supposed to say something else,” Kurt says.

A pause follows. It occurs to Scott, in the ensuing moments, that as the native English speaker and the team leader, it is a silence he is intended to fill. By the time he raises his head, the moment has already passed.

Piotr hums. “For when we are talking about two men sleeping together, no? Because I hear the children use this word all the time when they are discussing very unrelated things. Like the fashion, the movies, the homework — ”

Once again, a polite pause follows. In the middle of a set of squats, Ororo is staring at Scott as if he has a second head. Scott fixes his gaze on the far wall, lips knitted tightly together. She does not know.

“Gay?” Kurt suggests.

Piotr shakes his head. “No, the children say that a thing is gay when they mean it is bad. So I do not think this is the polite word. Maybe homosexual.”

Ororo squats once more, actively glaring at Scott. Logan starts to laugh.

“Hey, you are laughing at us but you are not helping!” Kurt shouts.

“You’re bein’ way too entertaining for that.” Logan’s voice booms throughout the gym, full and low. Scott’s shoulders stiffen.

“I think homo is fine,” Kurt continues. When Scott finally glances up, a pair of fangs flash delicately from between his teeth. “But I have also heard fairy, and flamboyant, and fruitcake — “

“Perhaps anything to do with fruit is acceptable,” Piotr offers, before he begins to laugh. “Or it is just words starting with f.”

In agreement, Kurt nods. “Fruit is delicious.”

Scott is going to throw up.

When Ororo throws her barbel down onto the mat, Scott jumps. He tries desperately to ignore the sound of Logan scoffing at him.

“Boys,” she says, panting with her hands clasped against her knees. “None of those words are polite.”

“Oh,” Kurt says.

“Many of them are slurs.”

“Oh,” Piotr says.

At once, all eyes in the room turn to Scott. Sweat drips down the length of his spine. No one says anything, but the implication is clear regardless. Pain, nausea, and panic envelop Scott in layers — like he’d been kicked in the groin.

“Sorry,” he says. “I don’t — sorry. I don’t feel well.”

Scott cannot recall ever being kicked in the balls. But as the seconds wear on, all eyes on him, he becomes more and more certain this has happened to him before.

“Oh,” Kurt repeats. His tone is concerned, this time, rather than embarrassed. “My apologies, mein chef. Perhaps I have pushed you too hard.”

“It’s fine,” Scott lies, shaking his head. Jean isn’t here. No one will call him on it. He presses further, fibbing even more flagrantly, “Jean said she might be coming down with something a few days ago. I’m just gonna hit the, uh. Showers.”

As he stands, Piotr pats him roughly on the shoulder. The motion knocks Scott off his feet, but Piotr subtly braces him with the same hand. Sincere beyond explanation, he stares into the void of Scott’s ruby quartz visor.

“Take it easy, yes?”

Piotr means it genuinely. Scott has never known him to be malicious or even unkind. Kurt had intended to be a priest. And Logan —

“Thanks.” Scott nods as he retrieves his crutches. “I’ll be fine.”

Before being an X-Man, Logan had intended to be nothing.

As Scott hobbles into the locker rooms, crutches creaking beneath him, Logan mutters, “Yeah, I’m callin’ it quits, too.”

Scott hobbles faster, teeth gritted.

Now, Logan intends to be nothing other than a thorn in Scott’s side.

Logan’s backside is a furry plane upon which droplets of water collect.

His butt is a magnet for Scott’s gaze. Like viscera, a crime scene, or the piercing rays of the sun after escaping the impenetrable darkness of a cave. The sight of it pains him. Sat on the bench running parallel to the row of lockers, Scott notes the shower curtain which Logan has chosen not to use.

He wonders, sometimes, if repeat exposure to Jean’s mind had sucked out some vital neurochemical nutrient that can never be restored.

Water beats against the tile. Unabashed, broad hands wander over his chest, shoulders, and hips. He doesn’t use soap.

It feels like a test.

There is no failure to be had, of course. Scott isn’t gay.

But Logan might think he is. Logan had said as much not five minutes ago: if anyone here is a pansy, it’s Summers. Fingers swipe between his cheeks, quick and clinical. If Scott were gay, it would be a tease.

But Scott isn’t. A fag, that is. And he’s not a homo, or a pansy, or a fruitcake, or whatever else anyone could think to say. Scott does not like men. Logan bends at the waist, dragging fingers down the stocky lengths of his legs, hanging testicles forming a shadow at the apex of parted thighs.

Reaching into the depths of his mind, Scott discovers only the sweet relief of nothing.

Everyone knows that Scott isn’t gay. There must be another reason Logan is behaving strangely.

Out of Scott’s line of sight, Logan runs his hand over his dick. Maybe Logan is gay. But the idea is so ridiculous it may as well be a joke. Logan is the antithesis of femininity.

It could be a trap.

Water beats against the tile. Strands of coiled body hair are slicked against the back of Logan’s thighs.

He is trying to catch Scott being gay. Except he won’t, because Scott isn’t — in which case,Scott has nothing to worry about.

The thick column of Logan’s achilles’ is striated like a tree trunk. Scott needs to stop looking. Maybe it is gay not to look. To avoid looking is to behave as if he has something to hide.

Streams of water pour down the arch of Logan’s back and splash onto the tile. As hairy as he is, his back is surprisingly sparse. The thatch of pubic hair at the base of his dick had been impenetrably dense. It had not detracted from his apparent size.

It occurs to Scott with a dull pang of dread that, even if he isn’t gay, he does have something to hide.

Logan runs fingers through his hair. He tilts his chin up, eyelids drawn shut as the showerhead saturates his wiry muttonchops. It isn’t Scott’s fault.

It isn’t Jean’s fault either, even if it actually is. Scott taps his foot restlessly against the concrete. He is uncomfortable because he doesn’t want to be in the showers again. Not with Logan. Nearly three years had intervened between his parents’ deaths and the Professor’s adoption of him.

Vision blurry, Scott doesn’t notice when Logan catches sight of him. Scott doesn’t remember much about that dark span of years between ages nine and twelve which had ended in 1985. Jean had asked Scott if he had seen Back to the Future yet. Scott hadn’t known what that was. He had been in an orphanage. He had suffered a head injury. Children are cruel, Scott knows, and that certainly had not been the first time someone had called Scott a fag.

In all his glory, Logan turns.

The cascade comes to a halt. Waterlogged footprints darken the concrete. His dick wobbles between muscled thighs. Scott is staring. He needs to stop, but he can’t. Panic stakes him, trapped beneath the frozen surface of his skin.

Logan approaches, fist cocked. He is going to punch Scott in the face. He is strong enough to shatter Scott’s ruby quartz visor. The damage will be massive.

“Hard workout, huh.”

Logan’s words ricochet around the cavern of Scott’s skull. His chest heaves.

Lips dry, he responds, “What are you talking about.”

To Scott’s right, one of the lockers creaks open. An attack mounted from the rear. Logan pulls on a white shirt; translucent fabric clings to his skin. Scott is breathing like a horror movie villain. He had been for some time now.

Logan chuffs. “Pretty sure you ain’t supposed to ask, bub.”

It’s not Jean’s fault. She doesn’t understand men.

Lips dry, Scott asks, “About what?”

With a laugh, Logan shakes his head. Transfixed, Scott watches out of his limited peripheral vision as Logan slides sweats over his hips. The sweats are dirty, the same set he had worn in the gym. He had not put on underwear. Disgusted, Scott wrinkles his nose.

“Ya never learn, do ya, limpy?”

The locker door swings shut. Scott jumps.

Not another word is spoken as Logan strolls out of the locker room. His slides slap against the same flight of stairs that had shattered Scott’s ankle.

To be fair to Jean, Scott does not understand men either.

Scott stares down at himself, overcome with the asymmetry of sneaker to boot, sock to cast. It isn’t until a long moment of silence has passed that he finally connects the dots.

Scott raises his palm in front of his face. With an effete sigh, he allows his wrist to flop over.

“Limpy,” he repeats. “Limpy.”

Logan always has to get the last word in.

If Scott’s sexuality resides in the basement of his mind, his childhood is encased within the foundations.

Ensconced in one of the plush armchairs dotting the teachers’ lounge, Scott attempts to relax his neck. The ceiling is graced with a single gold-plated chandelier. Jean would have said it was tacky. Scott cannot bring himself to care.

He supposes it isn’t strictly an issue — both his opinions and childhood memories. He needs neither. People are who they choose to be. Scott chooses what he cares about. And even if he does not choose what he remembers of his childhood, he chooses who he is regardless.

Nail drags along the seam of the upholstery. The chandelier rotates, the movement minute. Something about the sentiment does not ring true.

Scott’s heart thumps. He wants to be everything that Jean wants.

He is not.

The walls creak, an accompaniment to the beat of the footsteps approaching from down the hall. Scott is the antithesis of what Jean wants in more ways than one. He is not spontaneous or adventurous or caring or even the kind of person who is capable of enjoying coherently enjoying overarching aspects of life. Scott is not gay.

This is not to say that Jean actually wants him to be gay. That would be counter-intuitive. Mushroom clouds of steam plume in the hallways of Scott’s mind. She wants him to enjoy himself.

Slowly, Scott peels off ruby quartz visor. Anxiety claws at the interior walls of his arteries, heart thundering and muscles spasming. Blind, he traces the indents lining the bridge of his nose and the scores left above the folds of his ears.

He is not being fair. He knows how to enjoy himself. He does not enjoy vacations, but he will always have chess and logic puzzles and horseshoe and a myriad of yet-undiscovered activities to help clear his mind. But do those things bring him pleasure?

He is capable of experiencing pleasure. But there is a difference between the simple pleasure of cereal and Seinfeld reruns and diner pancakes and the kind of pleasure Scott had seen mythologized in the abyss of Jean’s mind.

Palm pressed against eyelids, the pressure begins to build up. Scott needs to put his visor back on. The fluttering curtains of Jean’s Manhattan apartment whisper across his mind’s eye followed in lockstep by the piecemeal recollection of her roommate: bold eyeshadow on dark skin, hoop earrings, big smile. Her perfume had been distinct, although Scott cannot recall her scent. He had only met her twice. Her image slips like sand through his fingers.

Jean had fought with the Professor about going to college. Characterized by long disapproving silences and stubbornly crossed arms, the dynamic had been completely foreign to Scott. When he and the Professor disagree, it is cordial until they begin to shout at one another. Regardless of who shouts first, Scott nearly always accepts the blame.

Scott had not wanted her to leave either. He forgets sometimes. They had been dating for nearly a year at the time, the static age gap of twenty months growing to feel like a chasm. Jean had wanted to enjoy her life and understand herself. She had been sitting on the couch on the other side of that very room, leaning into Scott’s shoulder with bare feet tucked between the cushions of the couch and said, You get it, right?

And Scott hadn’t. Jean had known.

He slides his ruby quartz visor back into place. Thick plastic molds him back into his correct shape. Perhaps Scott could have. Understood, that is. The more he probes his own thoughts, the less he understands what it even means to experience pleasure.

Scott has puzzles. He has satisfying tasks to occupy his fingers. He has his understanding of the complicated networks of want and need and thought and feeling which form the silken threads linking action to action. He has strategy. He has leadership, the triumph and relief of his teammates emerging from a battle both victorious and unharmed.

Those experiences are not pleasurable for Scott. They are the absence of misery. They are safe and satisfying.

Jean had not been talking of satisfaction when she had said she wanted to enjoy her life. The pleasures she had been speaking of had not been those analogous to television and food, Scott had finally inferred after years of avoiding his own simmering resentment and confusion. She had not been referring to university classes or living in the city or living not a block from her favorite bakery.

Scott’s body sinks into the cushions. He craves to shove his fingers beneath his cast and scratch his own skin raw. Jean had meant something more significant, some concept Scott can see in silhouette but defies all attempts to define it in any other dimension.

It has been more than ten years and Scott still does not understand.

“Oh. Hello, Scott. How are you?”

Cast in shades of red, Hank’s furry face manifests above him.

“Have you seen my notebook anywhere? I was sitting in that chair earlier and seem to have misplaced it.”

Wordlessly, Scott shoves his hand deep within the armchair. He gropes about, uncoordinated, just as he had in the cavern of Jean’s mind. Faux leather greets his fingertips.

“Here.”

Hank adjusts comically tiny spectacles before taking the book. Does Scott even find it pleasurable to spend time with Jean? He knows he should. There are moments of exhilaration, but the vast majority of the time Scott finds himself marionetted by cords of his own obligation and anxiety.

“Thank you.”

Oversized fingers flip through feather-thin paper. The movement of the pages is not dissimilar to Scott’s own thoughts.

Voice low, Scott mumbles, “Can I ask you something?”

Hank stares down at him. “Certainly,” he responds. “Is everything alright?”

“What does it mean to enjoy something?” Scott asks, ignoring the question. He has no idea how to respond to it. “In the sense of, like. Pleasure.”

Hank blinks. “I assume you are looking for more than the dictionary definition,” he says, gesturing to the wall behind the chair. Scott does not turn. He understands at least one of the tomes must be a dictionary.

“Yes.” Scott licks his lips. “It’s not the absence of pain.”

“Indeed,” Hank agrees. He slides the book into his pocket. Insubstantial strands of fur leave him outlined in a fuzzy halo. “Rather than the absence of suffering, pleasure may be most easily defined as its opposite. But there are difficulties with any definition, particularly one that explains a concept via exclusion. Why do you ask?”

Scott’s head aches. He appreciates the pain.

Attempting to find a succinct answer, Scott tries to think of the last time he had enjoyed himself, and immediately recalls the humiliating experience of sucking on Jean’s toes. Mortifying in retrospect, Scott had enjoyed it at the time. More than the base sensations, skin-on-skin contact, or even arousal, Scott had been fully present in the moment.

There had been no critical whisper in the back of his mind. No skulking sensation of guilt. No insistent suspicion that something is wrong.

Of course, this had been artificial. His mind had been manipulated and restructured under Jean’s loving hands. She is the only reason Scott has ever been able to let go.

“I’m not sure I’m capable of it.”

With a kind smile, Hank nods. Scott had always appreciated his odd lack of judgement. Rather than submitting himself to the mercy of his otherness, Hank had chosen to take understanding and being understood by others as a challenge. Whereas Kurt maintains the careful neutrality of simple existence, Hank is personable with intention. Scott wonders if blueness is comparable to eyelessness in measures of dehumanization. Regardless, Scott is incapable of ether position.

“Certainly you are. Just as hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self-place, for where we are is hell and in hell must we ever be — the exact same can be said of pleasure. At least, I believe so.” His head quirks to the side. “Have you read Marlowe?”

In negative, Scott shakes his head.

“I see. The idea is that one makes one’s own reality. Happiness is sourced from the self.” The wide angle at which Scott stares up at Hank is disconcerting. Scott does not have the energy to correct it. “Or one’s own pleasure, in this case. Even in the depths of hell, there is always something to enjoy, even fleetingly.”

Hank has a foot fetish. Scott’s gaze jerks down, reaching his beltline before rocketing back up. The thought is inappropriate. Jean should not have even shared such a thing with him.

“Lobster,” Hank says, extending one clawed finger for each item in his list. “A dry cappuccino. Frank Sinatra.”

Scott struggles to imagine having access to any of those things in the depths of hell. Instead of lingering in his own literalism, he wrestles with his stubborn refusal to understand the point. He tries to remember the last thing he had enjoyed, prior to Jean’s feet, and recalls tapping his foot to the beat of the song playing off the little silver boom box in the TV room. He only remembers it because Kitty had laughed at him before making a comment about a grown man enjoying Destiny’s Child.

He had not felt ashamed. Or had he? Scott had stopped tapping his foot.

He’s supposed to be perfect.

“What if,” Scott begins, pausing to swallow as the apple of his throat swells, “it’s too much.”

Hank stares down at him. “I struggle to imagine a situation in which anyone is overcome by the desire for — ah.”

With an abrupt halt, Hank’s gaze slides down the length of Scott’s body, landing on his mismatched footwear. Scott tries not to read into it.

“Nothing brings more pain than too much pleasure; nothing more bondage than too much liberty.” His gaze cuts through an impenetrable shield of ruby quartz. “Benjamin Franklin. A wise man in many respects. But also, I think, it is important to keep in mind that pleasure is more than our own worst impulse. And that bondage is bondage.”

Scott balks, thoughts bound in the knotted small of his back. It takes him a moment to disentangle himself. “What?”

The corner of Hank’s lips turn up, a single sharp fang catching in the light. “To give oneself over to wanton pleasure is not desirable. That would be hedonism. But to deny oneself the pleasures of life for no reason other than the belief that one should is also not desirable. That would be stoicism.”

“Right.”

The phantom scent of Jean’s shampoo fills Scott’s sinuses. His mouth goes dry.

“Or, perhaps more accurately, self-flagellation.” Hank is frowning, staring off into space. “There are certainly some nuances. Although the Stoics were known to be quite repressed.”

Scott is not sure he even knows what too much pleasure feels like.

“Apprehension of hedonism is an interesting concept, though. Are you familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave?”

Hank keeps talking. He doesn’t wait for a response from Scott before continuing.

“The metaphor posits a scenario wherein a man has been chained by his neck and ankles to face the inner wall of a cave. He has never known anything else. Behind him, a fire roars. Unable to look over his own shoulder, he perceives the world only through shadows cast onto the cave wall by anything which pass between his back and the fire. He has no conception of the world outside of this. To him, the shadows cast onto the wall are the truest, most quintessential form of objects as they exist in the world.”

Perhaps Scott should not have asked.

“Imagine the shock to this man of being released from his internment only to experience the world as lit by the sun, in all its vivid glory”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Scott attempts to do so. He struggles. If anything, he is much more easily able to understand that experience in reverse.

“There are, of course, many applications of the metaphor. But in this case, the lesson is that you cannot know whether you are experiencing the true nature of something or only staring at its shadow cast upon the wall.”

Blankly, Scott stares up at Hank. A set of furry eyebrows scale his forehead.

“We must use all of the tools at our disposal in order to understand the true nature of the world. This applies to concepts such as pleasure.”

All at once, the metaphor clicks. Scott understands nothing about pleasure, about giving in to his worst impulses, because he is completely unwilling to entertain them.

“I see,” Scott says.

The art class had gone horribly. The students had laughed at him. Scott’s understanding of geometry, the ways in which objects relate to one another in the physical world, had not been adequate to hold his own against a canvas. Like Jean’s pleasure, there is an intangible ingredient needed that Scott remains shamefully ignorant of.

Down the hall, the heater kicks on. The first snow is expected any day now.

“Personally, I think this concept can be applied to the self as well. In a vague sense, at least. We do not know ourselves unless we are willing to question our own assumptions. We assume we know who we are, but the future wields possibilities beyond our current knowledge. As such, we never know who we may become.”

Scott bites his tongue. “Some of us, at least.”

Hands hanging limply below his waist, Hank asks, “What?”

Scott shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“And, of course, we must be open to accept new information, no matter how outlandish it appears within our current frame of reference. The second part of the metaphor involves the enlightened man returning to the cave to attempt to share his new understanding of the world with others still trapped within its depths. My understanding is that the metaphor was employed for many years by philosophers attempting to shame their dissidents for a number of years.”

Woodenly, Scott nods.

Unwelcome, the essence of Jean’s desire for Logan intrudes on Scott’s mental landscape. The urge to claim, to ruin, to fuck in the animalistic sense probably is not the worst impulse that Logan has ever been subject to. The idea of inflicting that same state upon Scott — a slave to his own needs, wants, desires, nothing more than an animal — makes him feel ill.

In all fairness, however, staring at Logan in the shower is certainly one of the worst impulses that a person could possibly suffer.

“Helpful?” Hank asks.

It had not truly been Scott’s impulse. Earlier that day, Scott had simply been in the process of understanding his and Jean’s phone conversation. And the first time, it had been Jean’s fault entirely.

Delayed, Scott nods. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Jean had forced him, in a certain way. Not through blackmail or manipulation, but in the same way she forces Scott to set aside his doubts and anxieties by filling his mind with nothing but her. She had not intended to inflict her attraction to Logan on him, obviously, but the idea that Jean had reshaped Scott into something he would never otherwise have become through no will of his own —

The cessation of control, the sheer concept of it, fills Scott with pleasure.

Hank smiles. Scott bites into his own lip, attempting to weather the waves of guilt and shame which inevitably follow.

“You should attempt to let loose on occasion, my friend. You’re not Spock.”

Hank doesn’t wait for a response before departing the room. The floorboards creak beneath his weight.

Scott wants Jean to have everything she wants. He remembers that fleeting liberty, lost in the throes of his own sexuality, wherein he had cared about nothing else. On his own, Scott isn’t capable of letting loose.

But, just as Jean knows everything that Scott is, was, and will be, she is also capable of changing him.

By the time Scott has typed the text, he has weighed the pros and cons list quite extensively.

Perched on the edge of their bed, Scott stares down at his Nokia. Jean knows his mind. She knows Scott better than he knows himself. And if he is going to lose control with anyone, it should be Jean. She could compel him to do anything, at any time, and chooses not to. Scott can trust her. He already does every day.

He loves her. He wants her to be happy. He wants her to get everything she needs from their relationship. An aching pit yawns within him, as deep and inscrutable as the twisting caverns of Jean’s mind.

He does not want her to leave him.

Pixelated letters pin him in place, silhouetted by the backlit screen. If you want, you could make me think about Logan again.

He had checked everything. The number, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, phrasing. Think about had been like had been masturbate to. If you want as If you would like as If you wish, all appearing at both the beginning and end of the message. No amount of fiddling has made the words any more appealing.

And they do have to be words.

Scott knows he will lose his grasp on these ideas if he allows them to simmer any longer. His certainty in his sexuality, his understanding of his relationship with Jean, and his peace with his own want will die like a flame gasping for air in the oxygen-deprived depths of a lonely cavern. He will forget what the sun looks like.

Sucking in a deep breath, Scott settles his thumb over the center button. It gives without more than a twitch.

Seconds pass. Wind scrabbles at the window panes. The cast scratches against the bedskirt. The anxious sound of Scott’s heartbeat thundering in his ears precedes the frantic ringing of his cell by only milliseconds.

Heart in his throat, Scott declines the call.

Appalled, Scott stares down at the screen. He just hung up on Jean. Except he hadn’t hung up on her, because he did not answer the call. He hadn’t even allowed it to run through. He can’t believe he did that. Why had he not considered what would happen after he sent the text? He —

are you ok

How does she type so fast? It had taken Scott nearly thirty minutes to type out that one sentence. His response text is interrupted by another call, which Scott once again declines in a panic.

Sweating, he manages to type, cant cal now. busy.

Fingers shaking, stomach clenching, Scott holds his breath for less than ten seconds before his phone buzzes once again.

whats wrong

Nothing, Scott types. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. He cannot lie about this or pretend it never happened. Jean is a telepath. Talk tomorrow.

He presses send and immediately begins anew.

I am fine.

okay. home tmrw. love you.

Love you. The words arc back and forth within the wires of his brain, crackling with electricity. Scott is supposed to think about things before he does them. Why did he not think?

Love you, too, he responds.

As many mistakes as there are ahead of him, Scott at least will not make the same one twice.

Chapter Text

“What has gotten into you?”

Jean hovers over him, arms crossed. Perched on the edge of the bed, palms pressed between his knees, and feet dangling above the floor, Scott is poised as a misbehaving child.

The silence elongates, becoming progressively more uncomfortable as the seconds tick on. Scott realizes with a nauseating pang of dread that the question had not been rhetorical.

“I thought you’d like it,” he says, for lack of anything more thoughtful to say.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, he cringes as Jean’s eyebrows furrow.

“That’s what I mean.” Jean raises a hand, gesturing sharply at Scott’s face. It feels more accusatory than strictly warranted. Perhaps he had embarrassed her again. “Why are you trying to do things for me?”

Once again, silence follows. Behind the safety of his ruby quartz visor, Scott waits for Jean to pause and her lips to press into a thin, sheepish line. That moment does not come. Instead, she raises her eyebrows expectantly as if completely unaware of how ridiculous her question is.

He licks his lips. “Is this a trick question?”

Blankly, Jean stares at him. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. She acts as if Scott is behaving irrationally even when he is not. She is the irrational one.

“Why would you think that you need to offer something like that?”

Scott pauses. This also feels like a trick question. In the context of a team, he understands the dynamic; there is a format and rhythm to giving praise and criticism. At least four compliments to every correction is what Scott starts with, then adjustments are made based on personality. Ororo performs best at that ratio, whereas Kurt requires slightly less praise so long as Scott does not raise his voice. The only form of praise Logan will accept is a stiff nod or a pat on the shoulder; he mocked Scott for at least a week after receiving a thumbs-up.

Jean is different than all of them. She takes criticisms from her teammates with far more grace than she does from Scott. Usually, she will only accept correction from Scott if he phrases it as a question.

Curious, Scott tilts his head. “Is there something else you’d like for me to offer?”

“What?” she snaps. Her cheeks darken. “No. I don’t — you don’t need to offer anything.”

Her gaze remains fixed on Scott’s shoulder. She is lying. Perhaps not intentionally, but Scott knows that she is bored. The duvet is rough on his fingers, balled into fists with fabric filling the creases.

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Scott says. The last time, he had won. Jean’s expression remains static, and he realizes that she is not reading his mind. “Do you regret letting me into your mind?”

Eyelids close and shoulders curl. Jean looks miserable. For a moment, Scott experiences guilt.

“It’s not that,” she says, eventually. Her lip rolls between her teeth. Scott suspects that she’s lying. Rationalizing, maybe: lying to herself. “I just don’t want you to think that you have to — I don’t know why you think you need to do this.”

Last night, Scott had barely slept. He had lain in bed, palms covering his eyes just like Jean is now. In the dark his mind had spiraled with a thousand eddies, all concerned with how he could possibly make Jean understand.

“I don’t need to offer you this,” Scott says. He is not incorrect. He knows he needs to offer her something, and he knows that she can understand this concept. He knows that she will understand. “Specifically. But something has to change.”

“Nothing needs to change,” Jean snaps.

He needs to phrase it as a question. Scott is correct. He knows that he is right. Determination boils in the pit of his stomach. Fighting with Jean feels almost as bad as proving her wrong feels good.

“Are you telling me that you’re not…” Scott pauses, pretending to fumble for words. He has already made his choice. While Scott’s emotions slink nearly undetected through the hallways of his mind, their presence betrayed only by an unpleasant residue or slight variation in scent, Jean’s had permeated every pore of the walls. Although Scott feels them in his memory, tight walls closing in on him from every side, it is difficult to label such an encompassing sensation with a single word. “Bored?”

“I’m not bored,” Jean snaps. She keeps snapping.

Scott frowns. “Then how do you feel?”

Lunch continues downstairs. Jean had pulled him away as soon as she had arrived, arms crossed and luggage bobbing anxiously behind her. Logan had smirked at him, one eyebrow raised, and proceeded to exchange a glance with Kurt. He probably thinks that Jean and Scott’s relationship is failing.

He would be wrong.

“I feel — “ Dramatically, she collapses onto the bed next to Scott. Her hands rise to her face once more. Scott wraps an arm around her and tries to ignore his own sense of unease. “Guilty.”

“You don’t need to feel guilty.”

Her hair smells like flowers. Scott thinks about this conversation as a back-and-forth, a battle, two opponents struggling for dominance. The bishop slides across the board, pinning the rook to the king. His cheek pillows against the crown of Jean’s head.

“I know,” she says. “We had this conversation last time.”

“And you know that wasn’t what I was asking you about anyways.”

Her swallow is audible. “I know.”

Scott had panicked, last night. Alone in their bed, he had contemplated what his life would look like without Jean. As much as Scott knows that he could keep going, he also cannot imagine weathering that change. His life would feel empty, his days meaningless, the barren confines of his own mind an ever-static prison.

He would probably attempt to go on vacation.

Fingers kiss his knee. Scott tries not to consider whether he already feels like that. He hates vacations.

“I’m not bored, I just.” Jean comes to a full stop, avoiding his gaze. Scott braces himself. “There are some things that I’m. I don’t know. That I would want, in other circumstances — with someone else, maybe. I don’t know. There are some things I’m maybe not — it’s not that I’m not satisfied.“

Jean tries to bury it beneath her own hesitancy.

“But it’s not — that’s what a relationship is. No one is perfect. You work, you build a life together.” She swallows, throat bobbing and head bowing and lids closing, washed beneath the surface by waves of her own guilt. She does not want to bring these thoughts into the light of conversation, but Scott is forcing her hand. He has already heard them, malformed and wordless. “I know who you are, Scott. I know what I signed up for.”

The words do not hurt as much as Scott thought they would.

“And even if I am — no matter what I feel, you don’t need to change — “ She cuts herself off, perhaps anticipating that Scott is already planning on nickel-and-diming her words. “Sexuality is an important part of who you are. It’s not something you can change. Or should.”

The skies darken. Storm clouds gather far above Scott’s head. With a flash of lightning and flood, all of Scott’s words are washed away. Of his thousand scenarios, Scott had never considered she would say something to that effect.

“I’m not — we’re not talking about my sexuality,” he snaps. “I’m not gay.”

Eyebrows furrowed, Jean stares intently through the ruby quartz visor which contains Scott’s deadly optic blasts. “I know?”

Voice curling upwards, her confusion is genuine. Anger coils around Scott’s throat. She understands. He had known she would, and she had, but for a split second Scott had thought that she had not. Tile rattles beneath his feet, supported by a creaking foundation. Water rushes in his ears.

Unwittingly, Jean places him in check. The next move eludes him.

“Can we have this conversation in my mind.”

Jean presses her lips into a thin line.

“No,” she says, with a lack of kindness Scott does not even remotely anticipate. “I don’t understand anything when you drown me in your feelings, Scott. I just feel them. And I’m upset right now and I need you to — it was going well. God.”

Inarticulate, she cuts herself off. Despite her protests, Scott feels the gentle touch of her frazzled mind to his.

“Why are you upset.” The words reverberate off empty walls, pitch descending in an accusatory pattern with each word. Scott revises. “Why are you upset?”

Jean exhales through her nose, the ghost of a laugh. A similar collection of spectres leave foggy handprints on Scott’s windows: frustration, confusion, guilt, shame, and love. Scott eclipses each beneath his own palm.

“Because you don’t seem to understand that I love you,” Jean says, “and I don’t want you to be something that you’re not in some misguided attempt to…”

She trails off, at a loss for words. Stormclouds fill the sky, twisting and contorting into a shape they were never meant to occupy. Gears, hinges, pulleys, and motors force the natural world into a mechanical monster. Breath fogging the glass, Scott peers out. To Jean, this is the antithesis of beauty. Scott experiences a different emotion: awe followed rapidly by shame.

“I don’t want you to — I just want you to do things that you like.”

Scott wets his lips.

“I know you love me.” Jean’s spine bends with a sigh, her cheek falling warm on Scott’s shoulder. He suspects the emotion is relief. “I don’t like very many things. So I think my idea would make things easier.”

Jean snaps straight, tension returning. Fumbling in the dark, Scott turns her on and off like a lightswitch.

“Scott.” Wavy hair tickles the back of his neck. Scott prefers to contemplate that sensation rather than the way Jean attempts to pin him beneath her gaze. She knows he isn’t looking back. “That is not true.”

Scott’s mind goes blank. Wind taps politely on the windows. It takes him a moment to realize that the sound occurs in real life. He turns his head just far enough to peer at the glass from the corner of his eye.

Without a word exchanged, Jean sighs in response. “You like plenty of things. You’re just not — you have to be comfortable addressing your sexuality on your own before you’re going to be able to figure out what those things are.”

Jean’s voice continues, a soft echo in Scott’s mind, so you want me to — before she appears to catch herself. Three inches from his nose, Scott finds Jean scowling. He wades through her words, forehead wrinkling as he stares back at her.

“Are you trying to say that I actually am — “

“No, Scott.” Jean cuts him off. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You are not gay. Just — ”

She comes to a full stop. Eyes squeezed shut, her crows feet collapse onto one another. Lines of stiff cotton do the same as Scott squeezes her waist. He clings to her even as she shifts in his arms.

Cool fingers grip the sides of Scott’s face. “Just stay here.”

Nails dig into his temples. Bookshelves and bedsheets fade from Scott’s awareness as Jean pushes into his mind, her consciousness sliding slickly into his own. Pinpricks of green pierce through Scott’s ruby quartz visor.

Expanding, burning, Jean’s presence fills the forefront of Scott’s mind. She darts through the halls. Whereas Scott is typically able to see her physical form traversing the hallways of his mind, this time she is incorporeal. Scott attempts to follow her and finds himself thrust into some far-off corner. Even as he tries to envision her movements, Scott begins to lose his grip on his own mind. The slam of doors, creak of long-still hinges, static flicker of strip lights are all muffled as if far away.

It shouldn’t surprise Scott how little ability he has to resist Jean. His heart pounds, electric zing of excitement running through him.

“Okay.”

And just as quickly as she had arrived, she is gone. Scott stares out at a world of red. His thoughts are disorganized, a filing cabinet rifled through by hurried hands.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Jean says.

Slowly, Scott begins to pack himself back together.

“We can do it. Logan, but — “ She holds up one finger in front of Scott’s nose. “We have to do it my way.”

Puzzled, Scott stares down at her. He doesn’t know how that is a deal. Her way is exactly what he had wanted all along.

But he doesn’t, as Logan would say, look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he squeezes Jean’s waist and stretches a smile over tired teeth.

“Yes,” Scott says. “That is what I want.”

Jean raises her eyebrows. “We’ll see,” she says.

For some reason, it feels like a threat.

It is dark when Jean once again rests cool-tipped fingers on Scott’s temples.

She had dragged her old cassette player out from under the bed, some lyricless new-age album which rasps across Scott’s skin and leaves him feeling just as nervous as he does clean. Metaphorically, of course. He hasn’t showered yet.

“Just relax,” Jean says.

Scott cannot. Her knees squeeze his hips, her breasts pressed flat against his back. She is so much smaller than him. Sandwiched between Scott and the headboard, he worries about —

“You’re not going to squish me.”

“Right,” Scott says.

He breathes in and allows his muscles to go slack. Beginning with his feet, then his calves, knees, thighs, the relaxation progresses slowly upwards until only his shoulders remain locked. The crown of his head brushes against the headboard as he leans back over Jean’s shoulder. It does not help.

“Just breathe,” Jean prompts.

Scott does as she asks. Petite fingertips dig sharply into the twisted line of muscle at the crest of his shoulder. He does not think about the awkward silence during dinner or Logan’s smug expression. It had felt as if he had joined the group only to stare at Scott, to smirk as if he knows, showing Scott that he is lying in wait to snatch Jean at the first sign of Scott’s weakness.

“And clear your mind.”

Thoughts circle down the drain. The sheets are soft beneath Scott’s palms. A threadbare tag scratches at the small of his back. The sensation slips away as Jean’s fingers slide up the column of his neck.

He barely feels it when she begins to pry open twin arched doors. In the foyer, Scott lies supine under the auspices of the crystal chandelier. Replaced sometime in the nineties, Scott assumes it to be identical to the piece which had been hanging when Scott had first entered the mansion. He cannot truly be sure. He had only ever seen it cast in shades of red.

Clouds of steam, exhaled into the vaulted entrance of Scott’s mind on the back of Jean’s breath, obscure its delicate gold arms. Exhausted, Scott allows his eyes to slide shut.

Logan crosses his arms.

Broad and stocky, hips cocked to one side, he is the picture of confidence. Black motorcycle boots tap impatiently against peach tile. The color makes Scott’s eyes burn. He cannot recall opening them.

Well? Logan asks.

The misshapen words don’t quite fit the twist of Logan’s lips. A beat passes before Scott realizes that Logan is taller than usual. The uncanny angle is corrected in the space between blinks.

What?

Scott has to focus to recall the context of this moment, the sensation of Jean’s body pressed against his, her breath hot on his neck. Staring down at Logan, all Scott feels is remorseless arousal.

What? Logan repeats, mockingly.

He snorts before extending his arms out, rotating slowly in place. Ill-fitting jeans and too-tight shirt, hair slicked into twin peaks, naked underbelly of his forearms on display, he is attractive.

Ain’t no need to pretend. The sentence cuts off abruptly, Logan’s mouth frozen in place. Scott’s acquiescent mind jumps to fill in the blank. Cyke. You want this.

Burly fingers slip beneath the neckline of his shirt. Scott watches, spine erect, as Logan reveals a slim strip of skin above his baggy waistline, the thick triangle of fur which comes to an apex beneath his belly button, the swell of his pecs, and the bare buds of his nipples nested in a thicket of wiry hair. His shirt crumples to the floor.

Behind him, the showerheads gush.

All confidence, Logan continues, Like what you see?

The question is rhetorical. He doesn't wait for a response before loosening his belt, leaving the buckle to dangle as he pops the button and tugs down the zip. Denim pools at his ankles. He shuffles from one foot to another, toeing off his shoes.

Scott’s gaze remains fixed, wide-eyed, on the soft bulge in Logan’s briefs. His size is obscured by the dark color. Blue.

The fluidity of the scene is interrupted by a power struggle. First a whisper, then a compulsive urge, then finally a set of manicured fingers manifest coiled in Scott’s hair compel him to shift his gaze. He needs to appreciate the whole picture, the context, the shape. Scott finds himself examining the stubble dotting Logan’s chin, the angular plane of his chest, the silhouette of his body cast in hot steam.

Sit, he says.

Scott obeys.

The bench rises to meet Scott’s backside. Logan hovers over him, gentle hands on Scott’s shoulders. Thumbs caress his chest. The touch is tender and reverent. He would not be so kind.

For a split second, Logan’s grip turns forceful. The scene hiccups. Logan traps Scott’s chin between a meaty thumb and forefinger. Dry lips touch Scott’s. The sensation of stubble scratching against his cheeks is foreign. Stocky fingers claw his chest.

It is not realistic. It does not have to be. Waves of pleasure wash over him. Guilt and shame and self-consciousness are kept forcefully at bay, allowing Scott to lose himself in the scenario.

For a moment, Jean’s fingers pluck at his nipples. The next, she is sublimated into steam.

Scott returns the kiss.

Desperation takes over as Logan begins to tug at Scott’s clothes. Needy fingers shred his shirt. Teeth scrape his jawline. Nails score his scalp. Wanton, Scott hears himself moan. He sounds like a woman. He sounds like he is enjoying himself.

Take them off, Logan says.

No. With a clunk, time rolls back.

Get it out.

Scott’s breath hitches. He worms his way out of his sweats, the rasp of fabric on fabric substituted for the whisper of wood. Thumbs hooked in worn elastic, he hesitates.

Fingers manifest in his hair. The grip tightens and loosens, tightens and loosens, humiliation burning in the back of his throat. Logan smells of pine and musk; the scent should be calming. The audio jolts, Scott’s teeth grinding, the shape of the words don’t be scared filling Logan’s lips even as Scott hears only, Scared?

He is.

Scott lifts his hips anyways. The drag of damp fabric against his erection is like searing needles penetrating his skin. White jockeys slide down his thighs, his knees, his calves, sparse hair growing slowly more abundant as he approaches his ankles. Underwear discarded, Scott shivers in only his socks.

Good boy, Logan says, and the world aligns.

They kiss again. Logan bites, canines scrawling possession of Scott along the inside of his lip. Scott parts his lips and allows himself to be plundered.

Insistent fingers wrap around his wrist. He does not think as Logan guides his hand up to his own lips and tells him, spit. He does not get swept up in the psychology of his own pleasure. He does not contemplate the increasingly compacted layers of alienation, self-doubt, and fear all obscuring an icy foundation of self-hatred. Jean wipes them away.

Heady, Scott lives in the moment.

His spit-slick hand drags abrasively over his dick. It feels good. Uncomplicated pleasure laps at his socked toes, cravings at the periphery of desire hooked and reeled in by Jean’s deft hands. Logan pushes Scott onto his back, gnawing ravenously at his chest, up the column of his neck, his tongue sliding wetly behind the shell of Scott’s ear.

Flat chest against flat chest, cushioned by nothing but bone and muscle, he churns. It is wrong, and Scott loves it. Steam carries the scent of leather and sandalwood into Scott’s sinuses. Logan growls into his ear, dark and low and unmistakably masculine, and Jean is the captain of Scott’s suffering. Her desires are Scott’s fears, the zeitgeist’s disgusts, the brand of Logan’s cock on the inside of his thigh.

It is profane, and Scott needs it.

Come here, Logan grunts.

He hauls Scott up by the shoulders, guiding him throwing him towards the showers. Logan is rough, but he could be gentle. He is not mean — to Jean. He is cruel to Scott, and he would suffocate him under the unforgiving deluge of the showerhead, would squeeze Scott’s testicles until they ache, would watch Scott frantically pawing at himself, a slave to his own worst impulse, and call him a filthy fucking fag —

Shock shakes the tiles beneath Scott’s feet. Involuntary, he wrenches back a control he hadn’t realized he had been fighting for.

Logan stands two heads below Scott’s eyeline. Fear courses through him, a vulgar hot venom. A scowl tugs at Logan’s lips, words biting though clenched teeth: What’s the big idea here, bub?

His thumb and forefinger form a ring around Scott’s genitals. A breath snags in his throat.

You been lookin’ at shit you ain’t s’posed to? Scott’s socks are drenched, wet cotton slouching between his toes. Water sluices down their backs and trickles menacingly down the drain. Amplified, Scott’s own terrified breath fills his ears.

Logan’s cock hangs limp between his thighs. Scott does not dare let his gaze wander.

Finger dig into his jaw. What d’ya think Jeanie would say if she knew her boyfriend was a fuckin’ pansy?

Scott seethes. Muscles flutter as he fights against Logan’s grip, attempting to scowl. I’m not — Scott hisses, lips forcibly puckered. Lights flicker and dim, plunging the scene into red-tinted darkness. The vice around his dick tightens.

Don’t lie, boy scout. Scott’s cock throbs against the heel of Logan’s hand, humiliating. You think she’d like it?

Feather-light, Logan’s thumb begins to meander down the shaft of Scott’s dick. A moan spills from his lips.

You think she’d want to you on your knees, sucking me off like the pathetic little fag you are? You can get my dick wet while she waits to get fucked by a real man.

His thumb digs forcefully into Scott’s frenulum, dragging a feminine whimper from between Scott’s lips. Yes, he almost responds, because he deserves it, but Logan continues before Scott can collect himself.

Or maybe she’d just be disgusted. You got the nerve to call yourself the leader, but underneath it all, Cyke, all you really are is a weak little —

A forcible calm settles over the scene. The lights turn cheery. Scott’s goosebumps recede. Logan is stroking him, his grip firm but shy of punishing. Jean’s arms drape over his shoulders.

“My way.” Jean’s reminder is firm. She presses a kiss to his cheek.

Scott has never been good at ceding control.

Jean’s grip tightens. Vermillion strands tacked to her skin, she stands beneath the spray. Overhand, she strokes him between the thin ring of her thumb and forefinger. She is flushed from the warm embrace of the steam. Discrete blemishes, pores and follicles and fine lines, are visible with the rich contrast of color. Growling and biting, she devours him.

Her cheeks are rough with stubble. Girthy fingers tangle in the small of his neck. Once again, Scott stares up at the ceiling.

Need you, Logan says. It is incorrect. So beautiful.

When Scott attempts to submit his corrections, he is met with a brick wall. Arousal consumes him.

Logan’s fingers plunge between Scott’s lips. Nails scrape the supple viscera beneath Scott’s tongue. Alien hairs grasp and cling to Scott’s chest, trailing south as Logan scratches at him, all desperation and heat. And Scott is wanted, irresistible and calamitous, and Logan needs him, will do anything to please him, heart thundering as he presses his ear to Scott’s chest, listening to the rise and fall of Scott’s lungs beneath his breast —

When Scott opens his eyes, the bedroom ceiling pins him to the mattress.

“Scott,” Jean hisses. It’s her hand wrapped around him, perched atop his thighs. He has no idea when she moved. “Why are you so difficult?”

He blinks. The world in red is dull and indistinct. “Huh?”

Hands bracket his cheeks, pressing him into the mattress. The smell of sweat and musk, his own groin, is overwhelming. Under normal circumstances, Scott would protest.

“Everything always has to be the way you want it.” It’s almost like she’s talking to herself as she shuffles upwards. Disoriented, Scott realizes that she is completely naked. “What am I supposed to do when you just need to feel good.”

Thighs frame his hips. Thin digits wreathe his temples. Jean pushes in, popping the cherry of Scott’s vision.

Bearded jowls frame a smirk. Bulky fingers encircle Scott’s cock. The world inverted, Scott finds himself staring down at Logan rather than up at Jean.

No words are spoken. Jean sinks deeper, the delicate hydrodynamic movements of a diver beneath the surface of Scott’s subconscious mind. He clutches at Logan’s shoulders, slick skin interrupted by scattered hair. The length of Logan’s cock is entombed alongside Scott’s in Logan’s broad palm. He moans.

His inhibitions are leashed like a misbehaving dog. Scott knows this is wrong, but Jean will not allow him to remember as such. His gut tremors with the absence, a vacuous cave. Logan’s lips meet the pulse fluttering in Scott’s neck. His ego collapses in on itself.

Excitement, escorted by fear, thrums through Scott’s veins. Jean does not reign this in at least. She jerks Scott back just far enough to view his own nervous desire alongside Logan’s seasoned confidence. Through an inverted perspective, he sees Scott Summers as lithe instead of scrawny, flustered rather than high-strung, characterized by the strict boundaries of a rule-follower but with the edges softened by fondness. He pushes Scott to his knees.

Fingers worm between Scott’s lips. Water buffets his bare eyes. Logan’s dick, long and thick, buoys under the showerhead’s torrent. The pads of his fingers are gentle on Scott’s cheek.

Well?

Logan is uncut. Smaller than he should be, too. Jean struggles to check Scott’s humiliation. He wants it back.

Get to work.

Scott watches, awe-struck, as Logan strokes himself. The spire of the shaft rests beneath the angry head. Its eye twitches. Logan strokes it again, foreskin blinking over the slit. Oppressive and all-seeing, it follows Scott like the eye of Sauron.

The one from the Lord of the Rings, of course. Not the evil pteranodon they had fought in the Savage Lands. Although, as the life drains from him beneath the impending reality of wrapping his lips around the head of Logan’s cock, the comparison to an energy vampire may in fact be appropriate.

Summers, Logan says. You gonna suck me off, or what?

Scott chokes. He is halved by fear, Jean’s yes intertwining with his no.

He shakes his head, twisting, fighting, kicking both forward and back, mind writhing as he tries to escape Jean’s grasp —

Eyes open, Scott is greeted by a reality cast in shades of red. He devours it down to the bone.

“You’re okay,” Jean says. Her hands are cool on his face. Scott wants them off. When they retreat, he wants them back. Jean touches his chest instead. “Calm down.”

His dick twitches. He realizes, with a jolt, that he is inside of her. Fear and anxiety are whisked away by arousal. Scott grips her hips, rocking into her. The sensation is raw, just shy of overstimulating. There is no condom. Rather than terror, Scott is consumed by desire.

“Jean.” He’s gasping, unspeakable urges belting against the inside of his chest.

“Good boy.” Jean combs his hair back. “Did such a good job. Keep going, just like that — “

Muscles go rigid, squeezing Scott tight. He doesn’t stop thrusting. He does as he is told. Scott follows the rules. He is good. He gets off to Logan for her. She wants it, and Scott is a good partner, and it is so easy to be good for her.

Jean pushes herself off. Scott’s cock slides out of her with a slick pop, smearing across his stomach. A smile stretches across her lips.

“Okay.” Jean grabs Scott by the wrist, prying it from her hip to nestle between her legs. “Finish yourself off.”

Scott nods, ignoring his own discomfort.

“And you have to think about something you like.”

Scott stares up at Jean and, deep within the recesses of his mind, the posture of his own open lips. It takes less than ten seconds for Scott to spill over the edge.

Jean sighs. She pets his hair and thumbs his nipples. In the silent seconds that ride in the wake of his orgasm, Scott wonders if Logan can hear it when they make love.

“I think I understand why you were annoyed at me earlier.”

It is the first time Scott speaks aloud. He and Jean lie in bed, sweat-slick and itchy. At least Scott is itchy. Telekinetic fingers continuously slide beneath the stiff material of his cast.

“Hm?”

Jean’s leg is hooked over his stomach, her nose nestled in the hollow of his neck while one hand supports his nape. She radiates satisfaction. It soothes Scott’s shame enough for him to weather through the moment.

“Obviously what I like is pleasing you.”

With an exhale, Jean closes her eyes. Goosebumps freckle Scott’s neck in the wake of her lashes.

A moment passes in silence before she presses a kiss to his cheek. “Whatever you say, Scott.”

He frowns. “I do like it.”

“I know,” Jean says. Her hand wanders down his chest. “And I like that you were willing to share that with me. Even if you were difficult about it.”

Scott says nothing. He cannot help being difficult. It is the way he is, he suspects, in some fundamental way beyond change. Jean surely knows. It isn’t until the silence settles into the folds of the sheets that Scott realizes that he does not understand the first thing she had said.

“But there are some other things that you like, too.”

The words are whispered into Scott’s ear, secretive, like Jean knows something about Scott he does not know himself. Panic pools beneath Jean’s palm.

“Are you saying I’m gay?”

The words feel silly as soon as he has spoken them.

“Scott.” Jean pushes herself up onto her elbows, staring emphatically down at him. “Look at me.”

He already is. Scott does not question the command.

“There are many things you are,” Jean continues. “Gay is not one of them. I know you don’t like men. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Relieved, he exhales. She is grateful that Scott was willing to share that — her attraction to men — with her. Because Scott was willing, was insistent, was bold, they were able to share something they never otherwise would. Jean’s desires were satisfied.

And Scott — he has a happy fiance.

“Okay,” Scott says.

Jean kisses his forehead, and he stops thinking about anything.

That night, Scott dreams of falling.

The terror comes not from the act itself, but the transition. Stability gives to freefall before surrendering to the unknown. For some uncharted distance and unspecified time, Scott sinks in darkness. At the climax of his fall, he’ll be someone else entirely.

The atmosphere, composed of approximately seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen, tugs at him in sympathy. Gravity has other ideas.

Still air turns to wind. Scott displaces each molecule with a multitude of his own. He wonders about the missing percentage, argon and neon and carbon dioxide in infinitesimal amounts.

He wonders how something so insignificant can matter so much.

It is not until the next morning that Scott becomes a person.

The inevitability of the process is a comfort. Every day, he wakes, dresses, brushes his teeth, and bridges the hallway for his breakfast. The simulacrum of self which exists in the depths of his subconscious fades. Thoughts, urges, and beliefs incongruous with his waking mind are sublimated into his unconscious. Brick by brick, identity is built from deliberate choices. Scott takes solace in little else.

Much more time is needed for Jean to make the transition.

She lingers in bed fifteen minutes after their alarm goes off, arms curled around Scott’s pillow in his absence. His heart aches when he disturbs her, a firm hand on the shoulder. She has a meeting with the Professor in less than a half hour.

“Jean,” Scott says. He perches on the edge of the mattress. She had slept naked last night. Soft breasts sink into her own ribcage as she rolls over. Her nudity, scintillating in another context, now feels only intimate. “It’s morning.”

She hums, rubbing at her eyes. He thinks about caressing the gentle column of her neck as it transitions into her shoulder, the sight strangely beautiful.

“Just another minute.”

Scott feels strange. It is not until he identifies the feeling that he is able to understand the reason it occurs: he has not thought about the beginning of his own day yet. Adrenaline floods his veins. Painful pinpricks of sweat eject from the hair follicles lining his forehead and upper back.

In sympathy, Jean’s eyes snap open. Her fingers hit his wrist with a snap.

“Sorry,” Scott says. He calms quickly. “I don’t have anything until ten.”

The moment slips away, ruined by needless panic. Scott tries not to mourn it.

He finally bridges the gap between the bedroom and the kitchen. Coffee is already bubbling. Logan stands at the counter, playboy smirk slicked across his lips. He watches Ororo exit through the opposite archway. She does not seem to notice Scott hobble in.

“Speak of the devil,” Logan growls. He takes a sip from his mug.

Silent, Scott squints. He doesn’t pause as he leans his crutches onto the counter and, resting his wait on his good foot, pulls a mug from the cabinet behind Logan. He pours himself a cup of coffee.

“Good morning, Logan.”

Scott barely notices the crutches anymore. Hank is supposed to run a check-up on him tomorrow afternoon. He is hoping to be able to graduate past the need for crutches.

A chuff. “Mornin’.”

Somewhat surprised by the response, Scott turns to relocate the crutches before shuffling a few feet to stand on the opposite side of the island as Logan. Once settled, he takes a swig of coffee and frowns. It is burnt and sour.

“How’s Jeanie?”

“What?” Scott glances over at Logan, who is found staring at the wall. “Oh. She’s fine. Just overslept.”

Logan grunts. A few beats of silence follow, providing just enough empty space for the machine of Scott’s thoughts to whir to life. The memory of himself on his knees, presided by the authoritarian eye of Logan’s penis, feels as distant as it does real. Scott’s pulse whirs in his ears with the frenetic energy of a computer fan.

“You two been fightin’?”

Scott contemplates first the ambiguous presence of the question mark, then the content itself.

“Sorry, sorry!”

Jean is tugging on one of her shoes as she stumbles into the kitchen, leaning over Scott to grab an apple. She touches his shoulder, the gesture casual.

Logan raises an eyebrow. “Hey, Red. How was — “

“Fine,” she interrupts. Quickly, she presses a kiss to the crest of Scott’s cheek. Her skin is humid, hair still half-damp from her rushed shower. “Running late.”

“See you this evening,” Scott replies.

“Love you,” Jean mutters before she turns and scuttles out of the kitchen.

She won’t be late. The Professor would forgive her even so.

Scott turns back to Logan and attempts to take advantage of the additional time he has been afforded to answer the question — or, perhaps, the opportunity to ignore it completely. He takes another sip of his coffee, allowing those scant few seconds to trickle by.

Scott is in the process of evaluating the question, both as a direct dig at his and Jean’s relationship and a confirmation that Logan does not have so much as an inkling of what occurred within the private hallways of Scott’s mind the previous evening, when Jean once again makes an entrance.

Eyebrows furrowed, Scott turns over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” she says, grinning. “Forgot something.”

Molding herself to the plane of Scott’s body, Jean cradles his cheeks within her palms and kisses him. Scott jolts when she angles her head to the side, deepening the kiss. Her hands fall to his shoulders, then deliberately wander to the back of his neck, lips parting to allow her tongue to slide sensually along Scott’s lower lip.

Surprise barely has time to set in before Scott feels his own palm wander down the curve of Jean’s waist. It takes him a moment to realize that he is being guided by the icy touch of Jean’s telekinesis.

Split-second, Scott makes the decision to trust her. The next, he finds himself squeezing the full curve of her backside in direct view of Logan.

Jean breaks the kiss before Scott can. She bites into her lip. “Love you,” she breathes.

Conscious thought bypassed, Scott functions on autopilot. He echoes her by habit. “Love you.”

This time, when Jean’s heels snap against the tiled floor, she exits in earnest. You’re welcome, she whispers in the privacy of Scott’s mind.

It is only when he turns back to Logan, whose eyebrows are furrowed in some dark expression, that Scott understands the comment. He imagines the words thank you racing down the hallway to catch her.

Sharp canines peek out from behind Logan’s lips. Scott examines the grin, but too much time has passed. It feels insincere. He had been upset.

Slowly, Scott sucks in coffee until the heat atop his tongue is too much to bear. Heavily, he swallows.

“No,” Scott finally answers. “We haven’t been fighting.”

Chapter Text

“So how much longer you got with that thing?”

Metal hangers clink against one another as Scott flips aimlessly through the rack in front of him. “Three to four weeks,” he answers. He needs sweatpants.

Across from Scott, Remy hums. His bangs flop limply onto his forehead. His dark eyes, passingly unsettling in a more typical context, are profoundly alarming under the hostile strip lights.

“Gaw, I dunno how you deal with that.”

Scott shrugs. He keeps his gaze fixed on the waistbands. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for other than satisfaction: each pair is equally as lazy as the last. “I’m just happy I don’t have to use the crutches anymore.”

He’d been on the boot only for about three days now. Hank’s instructions had been to stay off his feet and use the crutches if he planned to do a lot of walking. He hadn’t even brought them today.

“Lookin’ on the bright side.” Remy wanders behind him, voice fading as if turned away. Scott glares at the rack. The larges have run completely dry. “That a good quality in a man.”

Scott squints. He doesn’t know Remy particularly well. The man is transient, floating by the mansion more and more frequently these days, his past littered with a litany of immoralities. The comment is suspect.

“Thanks,” Scott says.

His heart throbs dully in his eardrums. He doesn’t know why he feels nervous. The Professor had no problem with Remy. Scott had been the one to ask for this favor. Admittedly, he had not had much of a choice: with Christmas rapidly approaching, a shopping trip is a necessity rather than a luxury. And Scott cannot drive with a mummified right foot.

“How ‘bout them, bossman?”

Scott turns. He’d been as surprised to realize that Logan was the only licensed driver at the mansion as he is to see Remy brandishing a pair of baggy harem pants. Based on the saturated shade, Scott suspects they are bright red.

He pauses, blinking. “No.”

Quickly, Scott turns back to the rack. He grabs the first pair he sees in Large. Technically, Jean has a license. But neither the poor feasibility of being escorted by the same woman he was shopping for nor the emasculation of being driven around by his own fiance had appealed to him.

“What, you don’t like ‘em?”

Remy laughs at his own joke. Rogue has a license, as well, Scott supposes. But he had seen her drive more than enough to feel nervous at the idea of getting into the car with her. Maybe he’s being sexist — he doesn’t think Jean is a good driver, either. In fairness, she doesn’t get a lot of practice. And, in addition to her driving, Scott has never found Rogue particularly easy to talk to.

“Not particularly,” Scott answers.

Remy is not proving to be any easier.

Behind Scott, Remy hums. “You know, I always wonder if that real real, or if bein’ the boss just make you that way.”

Staring down at the tag, Scott substitutes L for XL. The whole point is to have clothes that fit over his cast more easily. The drawstring should make up for the loose waist. “What way?”

“Boring.”

Jingle Bell Rock plays over the loudspeaker. It takes Scott a long moment to process the comment as insulting. When he starts to formulate a response, his first instinct is to snap that not wanting to wear ugly pants does not make him boring. In fact, over the last few weeks, Scott has been less boring than ever.

The silence continues for so long that Remy feels compelled to fill it. “Not that it’s a bad thing. Necessarily.”

Last night, Jean had wrapped her lips around Scott’s tip and, in the annals of his mind, replaced the image of her own face with Kurt’s. The shock of blue, flash of fangs, and velvety texture of his fur had been as alarming as they’d been arousing. Not the literal features, per se, but the incongruity of it all. A mouth is a mouth, Jean had whispered. She’d pushed Scott to the edge, oozing shame and lust, held Kurt’s mouth just beyond the reach of Scott’s frozen hips, and —

Internally, Scott pivots. He shouldn’t be thinking about that. “Jean picks out most of my clothes.”

Remy laughs.

Scott’s cheeks burn. Jean had made him admit it. Only that it felt good, at first; soft, slick, and genderless, a mouth is a mouth as Jean had insisted. But it had escalated. Scott had begged for Jean’s instead only to be told it was unavailable — as if it hadn’t been her lips wrapped around him in the first place — and she’d brought him to the edge and made him state aloud, deep voice reverberating off the walls, I need to come in his mouth.

“And she always pick out what you like, no?”

Scott stiffens. “What?” he snaps. Fabric fills the crevices of his fists.

“Nevermind. What about these?”

Scott turns to find Remy brandishing another pair of pants. He gestures emphatically between Scott’s boot and the zippers splitting the knees. Convertible! the tag proclaims.

A beat passes before Scott silently accepts. The look is, admittedly, quite cool.

“How your missus, speaking of?”

He shouldn’t be thinking about that. There’s no reason to, really. The exquisite humiliation of having Jean’s desires projected onto him is contextual.

“We’re not married.” Scott swallows. The thin curtain rod glares him down. His heart races. “Why are you asking me that.”

Rounding the display, Remy’s unsettling gaze once again skewers Scott’s field of vision. He’s Jean’s type. She likes her men small, whether in build or overall stature. All lanky limbs and charisma, Remy fits the bill. Jean likes charismatic men.

“I ain’t around all the time, but people talk.” Scott’s mind is somewhere else. It’s a wonder Jean likes him at all. “Things get stale. Complicated. No shame in it.”

“Well, they shouldn’t,” Scott snaps. The twee rattle of jingle bells echoes off bleach-white linoleum. Scott bolts for the escalator. Remy tails him. “Talk, I mean. Things are fine. Better than fine, actually.”

Scott knows that he should be ashamed. Twice-weekly sex had quickly been usurped by unscheduled bouts of shared fantasizing in the theater of Jean’s mind. The actors who occupy the stage are sometimes strangers, but more often than not the participants are their friends and comrades. Actresses, too, had made the occasional appearance.

It had all been very adventurous. Very out-of-character — for Scott, at least.

An elbow perched on the guardrail, Remy hums. “Good good. Wish we could all be so lucky.”

When Scott glances over his shoulder, Remy is gazing absently up at the ceiling. Sharply grooved steps rattle beneath Scott’s mismatched boots, carrying the two of them slowly but surely upwards. Opposite to them, an older woman cranes her neck to peer at them as she descends. Scott turns away.

“You’re dating someone?” he asks.

A pause follows. Scott steps off the platform, coat snapping at his calves.

At the bottom of the escalator, the woman is still staring at them. Remy laughs.

“Dunno whether it good or bad that the bossman don’t chatter.” He shakes his head, sighing. Scott grinds his teeth. “Where to next?”

The non-answer is infuriated. He will ask Jean about it later. “Gifts,” Scott says, breathing in deeply when the loud thud of his own boots reaches his ears. He is stomping. “Then Waldenbooks.”

Low-rising racks of trussed-up gift boxes delineate aisles on the floor. Scott stalks between them, weighing the benefits of ignoring Remy against the consequences of failing to appropriately demonstrate his gratitude. Jean had already promised to do the shopping for him — not because of his foot. She always does. Scott is thoughtful, apparently, but not in the way that makes one a good gift-giver.

“For Charles,” Remy asserts.

The students are a group endeavor. Jean, Ororo, Rogue, and Kurt had banded together to pick out an appropriate gift for each of the children staying at the Institute over the holidays — the kids who don’t have families to return to. Scott is more than willing to absent himself from that particular task. But he is capable of shopping for the X-Men — his friends.

He has to admit, though, that buying the Professor a book is an excellent idea.

“Yes,” Scott agrees. He stares at a display of gift alcohol. Whiskey for Logan, Vodka for Piotr. What’s the German alcohol? Is it really only beer? “Jean, too.”

“Stop.” Remy speaks with such gravity Scott rights himself, shoulders stiff, and immediately scans the area for threats. He only understands the command as being nonliteral when he sees Remy cover his eyes with one palm. “You not gonna get your girl a book for Christmas.”

Patience wearing thin, Scott scowls. Remy stares back at him, unphased. “She likes books.”

“Sure, she like books. Let me get her a book. You her boyfriend — “

“Fiance,” Scott cuts in.

Remy mutters something under his breath. All but the tone of exasperation is completely unintelligible.

“I do not recall asking for your opinion,” Scott snaps.

Things between him and Jean are fine. Things with Jean are better than they have been in years. He is sick of fielding unsolicited opinions on the health of his relationship from people who have nothing to do with it.

“Listen, you wanna go to the bookstore, I take you to the bookstore.” Defensively, Remy raises his hands. Even as Scott sucks in a deep, slow breath through his nose, the wind doesn’t leave his sails. “But Gambit call it like he see it.”

Scott scowls. Boxes clutched in one arm, he turns back to the shelves. Gloves for Ororo. He can’t also get gloves for Rogue. Perhaps even insensitive. There are scarves on the rack to his right. He grabs one without even thinking.

“Now that the right direction,” Remy interjects. “But — “

“Not for Jean.” Scott’s annoyance balloons into frustration. “For Rogue.”

He feels the scarf slip out of his hand. It isn’t until Remy speaks that Scott processes the fact that Remy had just ripped the fabric from his grasp.

“Not in lavender,” Remy snaps. He sounds as annoyed as Scott feels. “She don’t wear that color. I mean, she wear it, but — I’d go with somethin’ like this.”

He drops another, nearly identical, scrap of fabric onto Scott’s closed hand. Shock supercedes his annoyance. Silence follows, broken only by the off-key chime of a child crooning the lyrics to Silent Night over the radio.

Eventually, Scott says, “It’s all red to me.”

“Oh.” Remy blinks. “You welcome, then.”

Jaw clenched, Scott clutches the scarf in his hand and, once again, walks away. The boot, awkward and bulky, leaves his gait uneven.

“A book is a good gift,” Scott continues. “It shows I understand her interests.”

“I mean, you not wrong.” Remy scratches the back of his head. Scott wants to stop having this conversation. “But it ain’t real romantic.”

A variety of retorts swirl in the eddies of Scott’s mind. Romance is not what binds a relationship as ubiquitous as his and Jean’s together, and even if it were, Scott struggles to imagine anything more romantic than possessing intimate knowledge of a woman’s interests.

Staring blankly past a bin of fuzzy socks, Scott turns to Remy. “What would you suggest, then?”

Remy grins. “Mon amie,” he says, placing a single, heavy hand on Scott’s shoulder. “Your girl need some bling.”

Velvet-wrapped cardboard tickles the tips of Scott’s fingers.

The car rumbles beneath him. Wheels twist and turn, gripping the winding pavement of the Mansion’s driveway. Lukewarm air gushes from the vents, probably unnecessary. Scott heard on the radio that at seventy degrees, today’s high had set a new record for the date. Jean had been missing the snow. The lid of the box snaps open beneath Scott’s thumb.

A pair of teardrop-shaped earrings stare back at him. Rubies set in yellow gold, Remy had assured him, which would complement Jean’s skin tone. Scott assumes the color of the gems, at least, is fairly close to his perception. Your girl look good in red, Remy had explained as they had hovered over the display case. Prob’ly why she look good with you.

Scott had tried to ignore the sense that the compliment had been backhanded.

He shouldn’t be surprised that Remy had managed to talk him into this. More surprising is that Scott hadn’t thought of it himself.

“I’ve bought her jewelry before.”

Scott’s justification is barely audible over the rumble of the engine. “Hm?”

“I bought her an engagement ring.”

Scott isn’t really talking to Remy. He is speaking into the small box of the car, isolated within a torrent of his own thoughts. Hank had been the one to accompany him. It had been a few weeks after Scott had proposed. It had been spontaneous, down on one knee in the remnants of a battlefield. He had thought she was dead. The moment had been right.

Staring down at an assortment of red-glazed rings and precious gemstones while Hank had pressed the sales associate with a series of increasingly obscure questions had been anything but.

“When the wedding?”

Scott blinks. “What?”

“She your fiance, right?”

Remy looks at him, eyebrows furrowed in an expression Scott no longer has the energy to interpret. His visor, disguised as a pair of wraparound sunglasses appropriate for civilian wear, digs into the soft flesh beneath his eyebrow. An irregular, energetic beat pulses from the speakers at a low volume. The air is too hot. His foot itches.

“We haven’t set a date.”

“Right,” Remy replies.

Scott stares out the windshield. Branches arch ominously over the road. They should be trimmed soon. Scott wonders why it hasn’t been taken care of already before he realizes he has not seen this part of the grounds in nearly a month. Scott, more often than not, is the one who calls the landscapers, prices materials, and files their insurance claims.

“I can give you some advice?”

The car pitches to the right, veering towards the garage around back. Scott doesn’t respond to the question. He hasn’t been on a mission in a month. No one had been filing their insurance claims.

Remy continues regardless. “You gotta do your best to cherish a woman while you have her. You never know when that gonna end.”

Scott should be annoyed. He isn’t. He knows he needs to do more for Jean. Throughout the course of their relationship, Scott had only ever had a vague grasp of what it is she likes about him in the first place. Jean is out of his league in every sense. As children, she had held more potential than him. As an adult, she has more power. Gorgeous, intelligent, even funny on occasion, Jean is everything a man could want in a partner. Scott’s strengths, in comparison to Jean’s empathy and social skills, had always been useful traits moreso than a reason to love him. He has good visuospatial working memory and understands the nuances of committing insurance fraud.

Perhaps this is why Scott had only ever truly been impressive as a leader.

On his darkest days, Scott is more than certain the Professor had only awarded him that position out of pity.

“You good?”

Scott blinks. In the process of looping around the east wing, the garage feels impossibly far away. Hot pinpricks of discomfort break out beneath his clothes.

“Yeah.”

The tone of his voice is wooden. Scott needs to be more thoughtful. Their psychological escapades had been fun, sure, but they weren’t ultimate in any sense. Sex itself is not enough to build a relationship on. Even if it was, Scott would still leave Jean wanting.

It has not escalated beyond kissing, heavy petting, and mutual masturbation. Regarding Scott’s interactions with other men, that is, in the fantastical confines of Jean’s mind. The scene wherein Kurt had performed oral sex on Scott had been a compromise. Repeatedly, Jean had put Scott on his knees only to dangle the gamut of dick in his face: big, small, thick, lopsided, veiny, cut and uncut.

Scott had wondered, more than once, if she had drawn on his memories in order to construct them. Scott is the only man she has ever been with. Opportunities to familiarize herself with the male anatomy have surely been limited.

Heavy air catches in his throat. Things hadn’t gone further, and they wouldn’t. Scott isn’t gay. Perhaps that is the problem. He will only ever occupy the passenger’s seat, along for the ride. He likes being adventurous for Jean, but he feels as if they are rapidly approaching the end of Scott is willing to give.

Reaching down, Remy finally turns off the air. Plastic bags rustle at Scott’s feet.

Hatred plugs his throat. It takes a moment for him to identify the emotion as intolerance not for the unspoken conclusion to his train of thought, but the answer to his own question. Scott is intelligent, pragmatic, and determined beyond measure. He is more than capable of factoring his own feelings out of his decision.

The idea that Scott has exhausted his ability to meet Jean’s needs is unacceptable to him.

Remy clears his throat. Scott stares out the windshield, lingering in the vibration of the chassis against the brick-paved road. Jean could make him. He envisions himself on his knees, the magnitude of Logan’s cock resting not an inch from his nose. Would it really be that heinous to part his lips? To tilt his head to the side, kiss the heavy shaft, breathe in the musk of it, and suck the flaccid length between his lips —

Buried in the folds of Scott’s jeans, his penis twitches.

The sensation catches Scott off-guard. He sucks in a deep, sharp breath. The sound is well above audible. The ghost of Remy’s reflection shoots him a concerned look from the windshield. Scott avoids its gaze.

“You sure you good?”

“I’m fine.”

The fountain is visible now. Scott isn’t hard. Not even close. Whether fear had superseded that much less desirable biological response or the event itself had been fleeting, Scott doesn’t know. His body doesn’t do that.

It isn’t shocking that the idea of pleasing Jean arouses him, but —

“I need to be more mindful,” Scott says.

He had intended the words to stay inside his mind. Remy asks, “Yeah?”

Scott shouldn’t continue. His fingers tremble with a barely-contained emotion he can’t name. Sliding fingers beneath his shades, he rubs at tightly-shut eyes. One slip-up and his deadly optic blasts would vaporize the right side of the car.

“It’s just hard to make sure she’s getting what she needs.”

“Ah!” Remy smacks the steering wheel. The sound is jarring, but Scott doesn’t react. Calmly, he pushes his visor back into place. “Just about every man be havin’ that problem.”

The first few days of December had been so temperate that a few students had chosen to leave their windows open. He shouldn’t have confessed that to Remy. Of all people to trust, Gambit doesn’t even make Scott’s top ten.

“The easiest way to know what a woman want is ask. Course, bein’ too direct always liable to ruin the mood a bit, but you’d be surprised.” He laughs, the dark sound reverberating fully through his chest. Scott finds it comforting. “And always much better to ask and know you approachin’ things the right way before ya end up makin’ love to a woman who wanna be fucked, yes?”

Brick gives way to asphalt. The oversized door to the garage comes into focus as the car rounds the corner. Scott’s comfort is flattened beneath the wheels.

“No.” Scott chooses to answer literally. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The window descends. Remy leans out, punching the first five digits of the code, 48219. Scott calmly identifies each number by its corresponding tone. “The last one is — “

“Six,” Scott replies. Cool air spills into the car. Desperately, he hopes the temperature will calm the blush ravaging his cheeks.

“There we go.” With the last digit confirmed, the garage door begins to rise with a creak. “You two been together since y’all were kids, no? Ain’t never been with anyone else. Pretty normal, havin’ problems in the bedroom.”

Scott burns. “We’re not having problems.”

Tires are revealed first, followed in quick succession by rows of paired tail-lights. Remy frowns, his expression doubtful as he rests his chin in his palm. Directed at no one, his gaze remains fixed on the rising garage door.

Scott continues anyway. “Anywhere. Especially not in the — “

He cuts himself off. With the door at its zenith, the car lurches forward. Fifth on the right, Scott’s Cobra is parked. Logan perches on the hood.

Remy clicks his tongue. “Your lips say no, but your face say yes, ti. Listen, I ain’t here to judge. You ever need advice, you can always ask the Gambit — “

“Stop.”

Remy continues to laugh, rolling right past. Scott stumbles over his words.

“The car, stop the — “

Logan is grinning when Scott throws the door open. Medical boot hits the pavement first. Keys twirl around Logan’s index finger.

“Thought that was y’all two.” Strip lights catch the surface of Scott’s keys as they arc through the air. Scott nearly misses the throw, clutching metal to his chest. “Thanks for the loan, Cyke.”

“In what universe did I give you permission to borrow my car?”

Logan shrugs. The engine rumbles behind Scott, door swinging closed as Remy pulls into a free spot on the opposite side of the garage. Scott stares at Logan, who only smirks self-assuredly back.

“Boss, you want me to get your — “

As soon as Remy starts speaking, Logan turns tail. He saunters towards the door leading back into the Mansion. Velveteen box clutched in one hand and keys in the other, Scott marches after him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Scott catches the door. His boot thunks hollowly against the concrete.

“Huh?” Logan spares him only a passing glance lobbed over his shoulder. “What’s it matter to you?”

The door slams shut, pushed by Scott’s own hand. A short, ill-tempered, irresponsible, pathetic excuse of a man, Scott has no idea what makes him think he can act like this.

“You,” Scott hisses. Teeth creak beneath the pressure exerted by his jaw. “Do not drive my car.”

Logan’s not even looking at him. He’s walking just slow enough for Scott to keep up with him. Annoyance blooms beneath the surface of Scott’s rage.

“Not like you can use her,” Logan mutters. He slows near the dining room, turning his head to look pointedly at Scott’s foot. “Gotta keep her runnin’ smooth, right?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Voices spill into the hallway, congealed into an indistinct clamor. Lunch had just begun. Arms crossed over his chest, Logan finally turns to face him head-on.

“It’s vintage,” Scott hisses. Key clutched between thumb and forefinger, Scott stops just shy of shoving it into Logan’s face. “Less than three hundred ever manufactured. You cannot just take my things without asking.”

“Really?” Logan asks. The question is rhetorical. Scott knows he’s being toyed with. He needs to calm down. “Yours? Not Charlie’s?”

It had been a gift. Scott’s eighteenth birthday. Although the Professor could never truly be his father, Scott had treasured the gesture beyond words nonetheless. Representative of freedom to the average teenager, the layers of symbolism woven into the choice of gift came in layers. There was the trust Scott had been bestowed with to care for the vehicle, the assurance that Scott would be cared for even in his burgeoning adulthood, the careful consideration the Professor had put into purchasing a vehicle that Scott would adore, and the numb shock of the realization that the Professor had believed the traumatized child he had scooped up from the orphanage, who no one had wanted, was deserving of a car worth more than a quarter of a million dollars.

“Mine.”

Scott had maintained every aspect of that car for a decade. He’d slept with the keys clutched desperately in his hands for nearly a month after his birthday. His name is on the title. The car is his.

“Sure,” Logan says, sarcastically.

Scott had left the keys on his bedside table that morning. Logan had been in his room. He barely registers the few curious heads that poke out from the dining room.

“Where did you even go?”

“Just a joyride.”

A dry lump of tongue sticks to the roof of Scott’s mouth. He isn’t going to punch Logan. He’s not. That would be stupid, for a variety of reasons. There are students spilling into the hallway, a plethora of eyes fixed on Scott. Jean will be angry, not to mention the Professor. How would it look for the leader of the X-Men to punch a subordinate? And beyond everything else, Logan’s skeleton is pure metal.

He laughs. “She’s a sports car, Summers. She deserves a day out on the town. Not to rot in the garage.”

Adults, now, too. Storm places a hand on Kitty’s shoulder. Piotr emerges behind her, dark eyebrows furrowed in concern. Scott isn’t an idiot. He knows Logan is talking about more than just the car.

“No need to worry. I treated her right.”

His shoulder twists in on itself, collapsing as he’s shoved into a locker. Books tumble down the steps, heels scrabbling at smooth tread to the tune of raucous laughter. Torn scraps of foil crinkle against his fingers as he digs for his only pair of wool socks, ridden with holes, in the garbage of the boys’ locker room. No bitch in her right mind would want Summers. Nobody in their right mind would want him.

“Better than you, even.”

Maybe that’s not the only thing.

The words rattle around Scott’s mind, origin unclear. Silence hangs. Logan’s lips curl around the words as he rewinds and replays the moment in the theater of his mind. Each repetition adds another layer of rage, subjugation, insecurity. Scott is going to punch him. Scott —

A broad hand catches his wrist. Piotr’s well-muscled chest is only partially eclipsed by Scott’s own fist clenched around the little velvet box.

“That is not the way to treat one’s friends.”

Scott jerks away, burying his fist away in his coat pocket. Piotr’s gaze slides from Scott to Logan, growing even more disapproving when he’s met with a shit-eating grin. Scott doesn’t care.

“He is not my friend!”

The words are too loud. Scott’s face burns. He doesn’t deserve Jean. He doesn’t deserve any of this. Bowed eyebrows portray only sadness.

“Whatever problem is going on, I’m sure we can — “

Scott inhales. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t need help.

Ragged metal ridges dig into the soft underbelly of Scott’s fingers. He presses his shoulders back, towering over Logan.

“I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t care. Get your act together.” He buries the key in his pocket. “And leave my things alone.”

Sharply, Scott turns. He hobbles down the hall with as much dignity as he can manage.

“Whatever you say, slim!” Logan calls after him.

Remy stands at the corner, clutching Scott’s bag. “What — “ he starts.

Scott’s fingers brush against Remy’s, half-naked in fingerless gloves.

“Thanks.” Scott follows quickly with, “Sorry.”

He keeps his gaze forward as he exits. Doesn’t look at Remy, Ororo, Piotr, or the kids. He certainly doesn’t look at Logan.

Jean loves him. Scott has nothing to be insecure about.

“I’m sorry.”

The evening air is crisp.

“I saw they were on the table this morning, and I thought you might want them.”

Boot resting on the seat of the chair, Scott sits otherwise barefoot. His knee, butterflied out from his body, scrapes the balcony railing. It jogs obsessively.

“But you had already left, and I didn’t have time to walk all the way back up to our room, so I just put them on the hooks by the — I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it would — “

“It’s fine.”

Akathisia. The irresistible urge to move. Scott had given in to the urge earlier. His ankle aches now, bone-deep and gnawing. It is the bad kind of pain.

Silence hangs. Red on pink, Scott’s eyes glaze over twelve-point in Times New Roman.

“Your thoughts are loud when you’re angry.”

Ororo has the makings of an excellent leader. The same cannot be said of her writing.

“Are they?”

Jean alights beside him. Knees curled to her chest, the patio chair cradles her small form. She knows better than to ask him if he wants to talk.

“You know I love you.”

A hand on Scott’s forearm. It tries and fails to calm his restless tendons.

“Yes.” Scott breathes. “I do.”

He is hungry. He had not eaten dinner. Or lunch, really. Cereal scarfed down in the teachers’ kitchenette. He likes cereal.

Jean laughs. It is a light, airy sound. Scott should like it, too. Instead, he simply tries not to consider that she is laughing at him.

“And I like you.” A palm on his thigh, thumb vibrating in slow motion. “I ripped him a new one, if it makes you feel any better.”

Scott had been seventeen when he had finally demanded an explanation of that idiom. It’s supposed to mean a new anus. A stupid saying.

“Come to bed.”

“It’s seven-thirty.”

“I know.”

Possessive pressure on his thigh. Just like Scott attends the car, Jean attends to him. Scott hadn’t been a gift, at least.

“You can drive.” The words are insistent and low. “If you want.”

Jean’s palm creeps up this thigh. Three hints had been necessary for Scott to put two and two together. She should be sick of him by now. He should be sick of her, refusing to say outright what she means.

“I have work to do.”

“Life isn’t work.”

Wind whispers through the branches. It whistles through colonial gratings. Phantom fingers card through strands of hair. Borne of nature or Jean’s psyche, he doesn’t know.

“Maybe later.”

Hands on the wheel, fear grips him like a vice.

“Okay.”

He tries, and fails, to ignore Jean’s disappointment.

“I’ll get you something to eat.”

Scott doesn't respond. Lips on his cheek bid him farewell.

Jean leaves without another word.

Stuffed between the sheets, Scott intends to take the wheel.

Jean’s lips are cool against his. Mind agape, her surprise sluices into him. The gangling bones of her fantasy in double — a woman’s idea of what a man wants — spring into existence as pillars supporting their psychological theater. Logan crouches, spitting and growling, in the corner of their bedroom. Scott makes love to Jean. His form dwarfs hers in the center of the mattress. She cries out in ecstasy.

Scott drives.

Instinct is nothing but a fixed pattern of behavior produced in response to certain stimuli. Logan would define it as some sort of animalistic tendency, Scott is sure, but in reality instinct is nothing more than knowledge, deeply ingrained. Salmon know to swim upstream. Birds know to flee for the winter. Scott laughs, walks, and breathes.

He uses instinct every day of his life.

Instinct is what guides the rearrangement. Scott stands, neck bent and shoulders curled, in the corner of the room. Winding scarlet stalactites stretch down the foot of the bed. Sweat slicks her forehead. Logan fucks into her.

Jean is smiling.

Surprise gives way to shock. His mind refuses to wrangle the amalgamation of impulse and urge into language. He opens himself to her, hands on hips, chest on chest, thighs interlocked.

Her lips part in ecstasy.

No words are spoken. Logan stares him down, all angled jaw and hairy forearms. Jean fills in the color, the shape, the movement. He cannot even see her breasts from this angle, just Logan’s smug expression and Jean’s face, her face, lips parted and brow furrowed, and he can feel her pleasure. Thighs spread, muscles tight, wanting to spare Scott’s feelings — she would never — but unable to contain how good it feels for Logan to fill her.

Scott doesn’t speak. Logan stares him down. The only sound is that of his white-hot breath. He doesn’t need to weaken the truth by reducing it to language. They both already know that Logan fucks her better. Outpaced in every aspect: experience, desire, the mundane girth of his cock, Scott could never do better.

Scott doesn’t deserve —

The thought rears, reined and broken.

Logan is the stallion, Scott the gelding. A miasma of guilt, regret, and uncontrollable sexuality fills the room. It’s the stuff of nightmares, the fuel of reflex erections and erratic dreams from which Scott wakes up sweaty and self-hating. The slick sound of sex fills the room. The teasing give of Jean’s soft, hairless stomach against him is better than sex.

It would never be worth it, would it? Scott could never understand. He couldn’t. For him, sex and love are two sides of the same coin, firm and steady, characterized only by defects and defacements when instead both are an ever-shifting series of cylinders, of springs, of pins and grooves. A key and a lock, love is nothing but two people who fit together just right at the perfect time. No amount of pleasure would be worth the love she has with Scott, but the fantasy of it, Scott’s stone cold expression an ineffective mask for the humiliation and excitement which pours psychically into her, leaves her heart pounding and her —

Jean sags.

Logan, stocky and bare, rises only to Scott’s chest. He commands Scott onto his knees regardless.

And it’s there. One hand on his own thigh, the other replaced with Jean’s sex, wet and warm. Gasping, giggling, she wants him to do it.

Scott cannot even think about it, cannot put it into words. Thick fingers twist in his hair, attempting to pull him forward. He cannot obey. The scent of slick and semen overwhelms him. Scott is the only man Jean has ever been with. With no other frame of reference, of course Logan would smell like him.

The tip of Logan’s cock kisses Scott’s cheek.

He shivers, eyes slamming shut. It will be easier if Scott can’t see it, but the vision refuses to fade. Throbbing veins and drooling slit dance on the back of his eyelids. Velvet-soft skin drags across his other cheek. He can’t breathe.

Words cycle through the prefrontal cortex, a library silhouetting the simplest of concepts. Open mouth, parted lips, dropped jaw, limp tongue, all willingly given in service of another.

“Suck it,” Jean says.

Scott wants to. He breathes in sharply through his nose. The scent of musk milks his salivary glands. Scott needs to. He gags, whimpers, sucks in air, retches, shudders —

Like a bird of prey, Jean descends upon him.

“Fuck,” she says, and the shock is almost enough to still his hips. “Scott, that was so hot.”

He breathes in, jaw slack. Hair suctions to his lips. Teeth scrape at his jaw. He’s not inside of her. Impossibly wet, they grind on each other like desperate teens.

“Jean.”

He wraps an arm around her hips, pulling her closer. He slides between her folds, soft and silky, button of her clit dragging against him. It’s not enough.

“Love you,” she says. Scott’s mind begins to right itself, pieces falling into place. Their lips lock. He isn’t gay. “Love you so much, baby, just need. Keep going, don’t stop, don’t — “

Back arched, lips parted, she screams into Scott’s open mouth.

She trembles. The noises which spill from her are as violent as sobs.

He combs fingers through her hair. She gushes against him. She loves it.

He had thought that had been his own fantasy, but it had been Jean’s all along. He had expected to be chastised for proposing something so violent — emotionally so, if not physically.

But he hadn’t. Because it had been Jean’s fantasy.

Her orgasm lasts longer than usual. Throbbing on the edge, Scott loses track of time. He is not gay, but Jean had wanted him to be. She had dangled Logan’s cock in his face and made Scott think himself compelled not by want but by need.

Her pleasure calms, frothing waves growing increasingly docile until nothing but meek ripples remain. Scott had wanted it. He had wanted to suck Logan’s dick.

His hips buck. Jean’s body, limp and sweat-slick, lies as a dead weight on his chest. He could have done it. He should have been able to do it, to indulge in the fantasy of imperfection for Jean’s sake. The grief of it is tantalizing. To be even more of a freak than he already is. To belong even less to society than he already does. To give into the vicious beast of his own sexuality and, in doing so, fail at the most important role he had ever been entrusted with.

It would never be worth it. But the fantasy of it, unreal, controllable, intangible and private —

Mindless, Scott slips into her. Exhausted walls squeeze lazily around him. Jean’s mind floods back into his, cradling him with vigor anew.

He had felt he needed it. Scott had needed it, genuinely, at Jean’s best, and yet he still hadn’t been able to force himself to take the next step.

“Come,” is all Jean says.

Scott does.

In the dark of the night, he apologizes for his lack of control.

No words are spoken when Jean rejects it. The link between their minds remains unfurled, unspoken sensations rebounding back and forth in their most primeval of forms. It hadn’t been necessary in the first place.

She finds the process of cleaning his mess more troublesome than anything. There is even a pause, a fleeting thought, that neither of them should interfere. That Jean should simply tilt her hips up and allow Scott’s essence to slide inexorably into her, semen pooling around her cervix. She would be able to feel it, wouldn’t she, a few days later when it latched onto her womb, a cluster of cells clamoring for life in the darkness, a living embodiment of her love for him and his for her.

The thought is tossed away as soon as it forms. They aren’t even married yet. And cells fall comfortably within the scope of her telekinetic manipulations.

Scott feels her sadness flare before it is tucked into a corner of her mind and rationalized away. She doesn’t try to hide it from him. It’s not a shock.

Jean escorts him to the bathroom. Silence blankets them. There is no world outside this room, their suite. No responsibilities, no expectations, no words. Whether natural or borne of psychic ministrations, Scott does not know or care. For the moment he is content to remain dumb.

She sits him on the stool in front of the mirror. Lips touch his stubbled cheek. Fingernails rasp over muscled shoulders. He had been skinny, once. He had been weak. In his most automatic of mindsets, that is who he still is.

It’s not a shock.

Jean bathes him. Manual movements of hand, soap, cloth. She shaves him, wet palms and steady blade. Steam obscures Scott’s image of himself. The showerhead rattles. Water is summoned with a flick of Jean’s fingers, commanded with the twitch of her irises. The process is meditative. Jean submits herself to him just as he does to her.

She doesn’t run from that fact, for once.

Jean sees everything he is, was, and will be. Accepting him as such is another matter entirely.

In that moment, she manages. Her own thoughts, held back, remain a mystery.

For the moment, Scott is content to remain ignorant.

The ceiling stares down at Scott.

In the dark, Jean rolls over. The sheets whisper secrets against her bare skin. She plays with Scott’s nipple.

“You’re reading my mind.”

These are the first words spoken since they had made love. As the minutes had worn on, Scott’s mind had doubled in on itself. Time remains static even as the bright digits of his alarm clock tick higher and higher. Jean had spectated, impassively, as Scott swam through a sea of doubts.

A sigh. “Yes.”

His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, dry.

“Then don’t make me say it.”

Another sigh. “You need to say it, Scott.”

He doesn’t want to. Lacking threat without words to carry it, the idea tingles on his lips, an electrical storm of action potential. Jean’s fingers send a bolt of them ascending when she plucks at his nipple.

“I don’t want to.”

“Then don’t.”

The response is simple. Logical. It doesn’t satisfy him. Indeed, if he truly did not want to, he would have fallen asleep hours ago. Sweat rolls down his brow.

“I don’t.” Scott stops himself, licking his lips. “I don’t want to want to.”

This time, Jean’s sigh sounds more like a laugh. “And you get to choose what you do with that.”

Her lips are soft on his neck.

“I love you. No matter what,” Jean whispers. Emotion, raw and unfiltered, pricks at Scott’s mutant eyes. “Which is why it can’t come from me. You have to decide.”

Pain wells in him. She will not say no. She will not judge him. Outside of this moment, she will allow Scott to lie to himself for as long as he needs. He won’t. He isn’t lying to himself now. He wants it for Jean. He wants it for their relationship. He wants —

He wants for it to be okay.

Teeth grind together. “I don’t want to want anything.”

“Oh, Scott.”

Salt sears his nostrils. Fingers muss his hair. It isn’t until her cheek is pressed against his, cool and wet, that he realizes Jean is crying.

“It doesn’t make you a bad person to want to feel good.”

Indeed, it is simply antithetical to Scott’s vision of himself. If he says it, the gap between what he is and wants to be will grow impossibly wider. This is the most crystalized form of failure.

“Or a failure.”

She is listening. She knows.

Shame overwhelms him. His chest seizes beneath the cognitive dissonance. Safety is not a factor. There is no safety. Jean knows.

Scott has no choice in the matter. And this would not be the first time he had failed. It would certainly not be the last.

But one barrier remains, feeble as it is.

“I don’t need it.”

Silence hangs. Against him, Jean’s mind stirs.

“Maybe,” she says. Fingers beat a nervous tattoo against his sternum. “But we all deserve more than just survival.”

The response is puzzling. Life is survival. To move beyond would be to speak of theology.

This time, Jean’s laugh is genuine.

“Satisfaction,” she rasps. “Pleasure. Happiness.”

Hedonism.

“Thriving.”

Scott is already thriving.

Jean doesn’t laugh.

“What do you want, Scott?”

He wants Jean to own him. To shape him, to use him, to rob him of his responsibility. He wants to exist for her.

“No.”

Scott realizes, with a fear which threatens to devour him whole, that he is hard.

A lifeline, he grasps at Jean’s body. Hands on her waist, cheeks buried between her bare breasts, Scott allows her to hold him.

“Say it.”

He closes his eyes, pretending to be alone. His own breath rebounds off her sternum.

“Make me.”

“No.” Jean pulls him back, chastizing Scott like a child. He feels like one. “All of it.”

The thought bubbles beneath the surface, a beacon of shame broadcast from the depths of his mind. He stares deep into Jean’s eyes, into the gaping mouth of her psyche, into the shriveled essence of his own soul mirrored in the blackness of her pupils.

“Make me like men.”

The words feel silly. Mundane. Jean’s sharp grin is nothing of the sort.

“Good boy,” she says. Fingers herd sweat-slick strands of hair off his forehead. “Such a good boy, Scott.”

This time, Scott doesn’t follow her into the halls of his own mind. Eyes screwed shut, he focuses on the rise and fall of her chest against him. He throbs as he is reshaped and reorganized, dick nudging insistently at her thigh.

In the illusion of privacy on the surface of his own mind, Scott allows himself to fantasize that Jean had been the one to orchestrate this. A puppet on a string, Scott has only allowed himself to be deliciously corrupted. His every desire, every thought, every fragment of his identity have been replaced with perfect facsimiles in a heist so seamless he could never have noticed.

It would be the perfect justification, wouldn’t it?

She pulls away. Hands grasp the back of his head. The process had been quick. Scott realizes, with a jolt, that she had been prepared.

“Jean,” Scott starts.

She cuts him off with a kiss. “Go to sleep.”

And Scott, obedient as ever, does.

Chapter Text

“Scott, I have a — oh.”

Jean hovers in the doorway, only the sway of her hair betraying the excitement she now attempts to hide. Ororo sits beside Scott, a spread of papers occupying the space between them.

“Hi, Ororo.”

“Hello, Jean. How was the city?”

Jean clutches at her purse. A plain, overlarge shoulder bag, Scott can’t recall ever seeing it before. In another context, the gesture would read as protective.

“Oh, fine! Good. I got a new blouse.” An awkward smile flickers across her lips. Ororo doesn’t press further. “Scott, whenever you’re done for the day. I have something for you.”

Scott pauses. If he is honest with himself, he could not care less about whatever it is that Jean had purchased for him. To be even more honest, his annoyance at Jean for taking the day off had been exponentially increasing the longer he spoke with Ororo. It blooms into full-blown anger as he watches Jean flinch.

Unspoken, the words stop reading my mind slice through the silence.

Jean glances away. Ororo remains blessedly ignorant of the exchange. Scott fumes.

“I won’t have time until after dinner.”

“Okay.” Jean’s voice is quiet. Scott feels like a jerk. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

As she vanishes from the doorway, Scott realizes he doesn’t have the space to even entertain such a feeling.

Scott turns his gaze back down to his desk. A cacophony of numbers and letters printed in Times New Roman stare back up at him. A beautiful typeface and well-organized data cannot make the report anything more than words and charts strung together in a vain attempt to cushion reality.

Ruby quartz visor fixed on the surface of his desk, Scott prolongs the moment far past its due. It isn’t until he looks up at Ororo that he realizes she hasn’t merely allowed Scott the indulgence, but is engaging in the same one herself.

“Cyclops,” she begins, slowly. Scott realizes, at once, that she doesn’t intend to speak about Jean. His spine stiffens. “I am not sure I am suited to this.”

Ororo and he are far more alike than anyone would think.

“Leading is a skill,” Scott says, “that can be taught and learned, just like any other.”

She smiles. Scott has seen the same sad expression stretch across Jean’s lips more times than he can count.

“A very diplomatic reply.” She breathes in deeply through her nose, a sigh sublimating in her lungs. Discomfort tingles in the tips of Scott’s fingers. “That does not address whether or not I am suited to lead.”

Truthfully, Scott had never thought about it. He has thought about individuals who would make quite poor leaders: Kurt, for his laid-back attitude and brazen playfulness; Rogue, for her lack of flexibility and stubborn impulsiveness; Jean, both for the fragments of herself she gives away to others and for her simple lack of desire to do so.

“I don’t know if that’s the right way to think about it.”

Ororo’s fingers tremble in her lap. Stories below, Kurt lies in a hospital bed. Scott understands. He had never thought of himself as suited to lead either.

“We all have strengths. As the leader, you see that in others, but you also have to see it in yourself.”

The Professor had told him that, once. It is a reminder Scott requires frequently.

“Perhaps.” Her tone shifts.

Scott is more than familiar with the feeling of guilt. The injury had been minor, in the grand scheme of things — despite suffering multiple fractures in both his arm and shoulder, Hank had already projected Kurt would require less downtime than Scott. Superior healing factor, Scott supposes.

And the best case scenario, all things considered. A building had collapsed on him while he had been unconscious.

“I am grateful, I think. That I will never have to be as good at this as you.”

Scott shakes his head. Stressed, his lips purse.

“You have strengths I don’t,” he says. The words feel hollow. She is not fishing for compliments. “You’re well-spoken. And you have people skills.”

“Yet I lack your gifts in problem-solving.”

“You also lack my propensity for yelling.”

Ororo’s lips part in a smile. It’s genuine, this time.

“You do have a tendency to raise your voice.” The corner of her report crumples between her thumb and forefinger. “Not without reason.”

Scott has thought, on more than one occasion, that he would kill for Ororo’s interpersonal skills. As strangely inhuman as she can be, she possesses an effortless charisma which Scott simply lacks. He often feels as if his stewardship over the X-Men is merely tolerated by most, and in some cases actively loathed.

Would Jean like it if he wasn’t the leader of the X-Men? Logan certainly would. What little trust was present in their relationship had withered following the incident with Scott’s car.

Logan, like Ororo, has an ineffable charisma. Scott resents him for it.

“Unfortunately, it is not interpersonal skills or lack thereof which crushed Nightcrawler’s arm.”

Scott closes his eyes. The action is private, executed in solitude behind the wall of his visor.

“It’s a mistake.”

Ororo fixes her gaze upon nothing as Scott speaks. He doesn’t mull over the path to forgiveness, the complex relationship between competence and self-doubt, or even offer comfort. He knows better than anyone that those things must come from within.

Instead, he offers the firmest truth he can.

“One you won’t make again.”

At lunch, Jean takes the chair next to his.

Scott grits his teeth. The feet scrape against the floor. He doesn’t look up from the table.

“Hello,” Jean says. Her plate clinks against the table. The tone verges on sarcastic.

“Hello.” He keeps his voice carefully neutral. She is being sarcastic because Scott had not greeted her. Women are sensitive about these sorts of things. Jean is, at least.

She eats. Across the room, Logan stares down somewhat defeatedly at the day’s options. A rice dish, a soup, chili, meatloaf: none of it is easily relocated. He begrudgingly begins to load a plate.

“It’s good to see you.”

Scott had been avoiding her the whole morning. Or, he hadn’t been. But he had. Is she even reading his mind? Scott chastizes himself for acknowledging his strategy so clearly. He should be able to avoid her if he wants.

“You, too,” he says, anyways.

“After this,” Jean says, “we should — “

Scott cuts her off. “I don’t have time.”

It isn’t a lie. There are hundreds of tasks to occupy his time at any given moment. Scott could busy himself with work for years if need be.

The sound of Jean’s fork hitting ceramic with far too much force interrupts his line of thought. “Okay,” she says.

Guilt overwhelms him. “Until tonight.”

“Okay.”

When Scott finally glances up, the first thing he sees is Logan, glaring at him from across the room.

The conversation had taken place three days ago.

The math only works if he doesn’t count the night it had happened. Three empty twilights have passed, silent hours spent in bed under cover of night. This evening, the count will increase to four.

Nothing had changed.

Scott contemplates this as he walks. His boot rasps against the carpet. Before fracturing his ankle, he had never realized how much he relied on pacing to aid his thinking. There are some things which are too gargantuan to be considered while sitting. When picturing a man doing something important, Scott never envisions him sitting. Excepting the Professor, obviously.

Scott crosses under the archway into the main foyer. He’s getting off-track.

Jean had made him gay three days ago now.

Or, not gay. Because that is not what Scott had asked for. Supposedly. They hadn’t spoken about it since. The memory feels so distant at this point that Scott could almost convince himself it had been a dream.

Strangeness is all that grounds the moment in reality. It isn’t a conversation that Scott could have imagined. It is certainly not something that Scott would have imagined.

He nods to Rogue as they pass by one another in the hall. Lion’s mane of hair bobbing around her, he barely notices her nod in turn. She doesn’t smile. This is unusual. Scott doesn’t have the capacity to concern himself with such things.

He marches forward, destination unknown.

Nothing had changed, save one thing. It isn’t even a change, really, so much as a simple deviation from Scott’s expectations.

They hadn’t had sex in three days.

It isn’t a change. It is the opposite of a change, a return to normalcy. More strange is how quickly Scott had become accustomed to the violation of his own expectations. After years of practice, he is shocked by how quickly scheduled sex on Wednesdays and Sundays without the opportunity for make-up has come to feel abnormal.

Ornate, curling branches come to an abrupt end at Scott’s feet. He stares down at the carpet. Four booted heels peek out from behind a thin sheet of glass.

“Was thinkin’ I’d stick ‘round for ol’ Saint Nick, at least.” Remy’s heel jogs against the concrete. A chill had finally descended upon Westchester county that morning, but hadn’t plunged lower than the forties. Jean had grieved the increasingly slim chance of a white Christmas. “Tryin’ to show her I’m dependable and all that. More of an uphill battle than I thought.”

Logan snorts. Out on the balcony, both voices are distinguishable despite the muffling of the glass. Scott holds his breath.

“You can say that again.” A thin puff of smoke dissipates into the air. Scott spies it on the diagonal, glass doorway and window perfectly obscuring the two men from this angle. A cigarette dangles over the wrought iron railing, perched between two half-gloved fingers. “All women fuckin’ want is for guys to be dependable.”

A pause. The door is sealed shut. Logan can’t smell him.

“I dunno ‘bout that,” Remy replies. “What got a bee in your bonnet?”

“Nothin’,” Logan snaps.

Scott has his own suspicions.

A moment later, Logan confirms them. “Cyclops. Guy’s drivin’ me fuckin’ insane.”

A laugh, loud and boisterous, rings down the hall.

“Oh, come now. You don’t give the guy enough credit.” His hand disappears as he takes a drag. The two of them are well-matched: indelicate, unshaven, and far more content with immorality than Scott would ever tolerate. He grinds his teeth. “Sure he a li’l borin’, but he a good guy.”

“Yeah,” Logan growls. “That’s the problem. Girls want the good guy.”

This time, Remy only chuckles. The similarities go deeper. They both have a ridiculous, ostentatious sense of style. They both have poor grammar. They’re both Jean’s type.

“Ain’t really ‘bout him at all, then.”

“Guess not.”

Frozen in place, Scott’s cheeks burn. The wake of the silence scalds his tongue.

“She deserves better.”

Logan’s voice, strangely forlorn, cuts through the glass.

“What?” Fingers vanish as Remy takes a drag off the cigarette. “Like you?”

“Maybe.” Fists furl at Scott’s sides. The anger comes at waves, lapping at the shores of Scott’s serenity. “Don’t have to be me.”

“Oh, sure.” Remy waves his hand about as he speaks, wrist slack. Logan doesn’t mock him. “It fine with you if she get with some couyon. So long as he tie his laces crooked, right?”

Eyebrows furrowed, Scott stares down at his feet. He had never paid mind to his shoelaces beyond ensuring the two loose ends remain the same length.

Logan chuffs. “Guess not.”

“Then ain’t nothin’ wrong with the guy. Just about your broken heart, you.” Remy makes a convincing argument. His hand disappears, and Scott imagines it poking emphatically into Logan’s chest. Beneath the thick layer of muscle, there’s nothing but cold metal. “Cut him slack.”

Sweat pours down the back of Scott’s neck. The argument is convincing except for all the ways in which it is wrong. Jean does deserve better. This morning, Scott had wiped the grin from her lips and ejected her from his mind. He had thought he was right. He still thinks that he is right.

“You wanna heal a broken heart, Gambit got you covered.” Remy sighs. “There this place in the city, ti, and the girls — “

“Can it, Cajun.” Logan shifts, arch of his shoulders spilling into Scott’s line of vision. Muscles ripple beneath the thin material of his shirt. “Aren’t you tryna be a family man?”

“Woah, no.” Remy holds up a flat palm. “I say dependable. Nobody say nothin’ ‘bout family.”

This time, Logan’s the one that chuckles. Remy must have been talking about a strip club, Scott realizes. Factoring in Logan’s reaction, that is the only interpretation that makes any sense. Another shameful similarity between the two of them.

Jean would disapprove.

“You know this shit kills you, right?”

“Eh.” Remy shrugs. Scott watches one shoulder rise in a shrug. “We all gotta go sometime.”

“You can say that again.”

Hair tapers down the nape of Logan’s neck in a near-perfect V. Scott’s gaze flows over the swell of his shoulders, tracing the curve of Logan’s spine to its climax.

He would snatch Jean right from under Scott’s nose if given the opportunity. Jean would resent the objectification, but that’s how Logan would think of it. Jean is a prize to be won in a competition of masculinity which Logan should, by all rights, win every time.

Blood floods into the pit of Scott’s stomach.

“You should let me take you out sometime. We — what wrong with you?”

Heart lurching, arteries flooding, and heat creeping down his chest, Scott holds his breath.

“Somethin’ smells like shit.”

Without a tactical thought to be had, Scott turns on his good leg and bolts.

His lips whir to life as soon as the door slides open.

“I don’t have time for this right now. I’m programming scenarios for the team to run based on the skirmish with the N’Garai to prevent a similar injury from happening again. We have two X-Men down right now, Jean, which puts us in a particularly vulnerable position. I understand you have needs, of course, but I do not have the time to relax right now.”

The door closes. It vacuums shut with a soft, rubbery sound. Scott’s tirade ends without him having looked up from the display. He doesn’t need to. Everything from the lingering silence to the inopportune timing to the shift of scent in the air assures him Jean is standing in the door.

Her flats click against the tile. She waits.

Scott’s mind spins up its own counterarguments. He has plenty of time. As brilliant as his scenarios may be, they were designed for a full team. There will be no benefit to running them until both he and Kurt are healed. The only real purpose of this exercise is to make Scott feel as if he is in control of something which, in reality, falls completely outside his scope of influence.

Jean listens. She says nothing. To the right and down, Scott stares at the floor as if he could avert his gaze from his own shame.

“I’m not going to argue with you.” Her hand is soft on his shoulder. She sounds disappointed. Her presence lingers in the back of Scott’s mind. He finds it unsatisfying. “Dinner’s almost over. I’m going to bring you some food.”

Scott does not bite his lip. Shoulders tense and relax as Jean runs her finger over his muscles, atrophied from disuse.

“You can eat in here if you want.” Jean leans down, pressing a soft kiss to Scott’s temple before whispering, “And then, you’re going to come to bed.”

Indecently breathy, there is no room to misinterpret her intent.

He attempts to generate a response. Rocks in a tumbler, the edges of Jean’s words soften as he considers them. It takes him a moment to identify a series of orders.

He’s not used to Jean commanding him.

She does not give him the opportunity to protest. Before Scott can pick apart his own response, the control room door vacuums shut once again.

Scott sits on the floor.

He had ceded the single chair to Jean. So too does he relinquish his ability to work while he eats. He considers suggesting they relocate. Jean, listening in, only raises her eyebrows.

They eat in silence.

“I wanted to check on Kurt.”

He finishes before her. Chicken, rice, broccoli. Slightly oversalted. Garlic makes the back of Scott’s tongue tingle. Back straight, his plate sits empty in his lap. His butt is cold.

Jean hums. She doesn’t look up from her plate. “I saw him earlier. He’s fine.”

Silent, Scott stares at her. Jean’s response had been an indirect denial. He wonders for a long, uncomfortable moment if she truly intends to disallow Scott from visiting Kurt. It’s only down the hall. Of course, Scott had plenty of time to do so earlier in the day. He would be lying if he was not, in some sense, attempting to avoid whatever it is that Jean has planned for the evening.

Discomfort pools in his stomach at the thought.

Past reinforced glass, Scott stares into the pit of the danger room. He is being ridiculous. Jean cannot disallow him from doing anything. He is an adult.

Eyes trace over the seams in the walls, obscuring flamethrowers, spikes, and holographic projectors. Morally, Jean cannot prevent Scott from doing anything. Practically, however —

“Would you like to ask?”

She is a telepath.

Scott’s neck snaps as he turns to her. “What?”

Ear to ear, she grins. “You can ask.”

Arousal pools in the pit of Scott’s stomach. His mouth goes dry.

“Can I.” Scott’s throat closes, trembling with the effort. Jean stares down at him, chin propped up on her closed fist. Her legs are crossed at the knee. “Can I visit Kurt first?”

She hums. One leg bounces, Jean’s gaze wandering as if lost in thought. She takes another bite, chewing slowly. It takes a moment for him to identify the performance as a type of play.

Scott becomes painfully aware, bobbing under a tsunami of humiliation, that he hasn’t cum in three days.

Historically, that has not been a problem. Scott had marveled at how quickly his mind had adapted beyond the expectation of sex every three to four days, if he and Jean were lucky. Now, Scott marvels specifically at how quickly his dick had done the same.

“Oh,” Jean says.

Scott’s cheeks burn. Cross-legged, one of Scott’s knees is hoisted higher by the boot. He clutches his plate in his lap. She can’t see.

“Sure. We can, um. Wait a minute, though. If you need.”

A blush claws its way across Scott’s chest. Briefly, he wonders if Jean had altered more in the depths of Scott’s mind than she had let on. The thought leaves him throbbing.

“Sorry.” Jean’s blushing too, hand poised politely over her lips. Silverware clinks as her knees shift. “I’ll stop talking.”

She attempts to hide a nervous smile.

She hadn’t intended for Scott to react this way, but a part of him wants to snap at her and storm out of the room to lick his wounds in private. He doesn’t.

“Do you always have to read my mind?”

The chair swivels away, Jean’s head ducking as she tries to contain her laughter.

Lips pursed, Scott closes his eyes. He reminds himself that there is nothing to be ashamed of.

He had done this for Jean, after all.

Kurt is fine.

When Jean and Scott arrive in the medical bay ten minutes later, he waves at them enthusiastically. He is eating ice cream. Hank hangs from the ceiling, reading some book in impossibly small print. He looks up just long enough to greet them before burying his nose between the pages once again.

They stay longer than intended, chatting. Kurt is happy to have visitors, even into the evening. He talks of whatever crosses his mind: Logan’s gruff visit earlier in the day, the books he intends to read while bedridden, the potted plant Ororo had brought to keep him company over the coming week. He explains, in as much detail as he is capable of, the technology Hank is using to regenerate the nerves in his arm.

When Scott questions why he should have to spend two months in a cast for his broken foot while Kurt is sentenced to a mere week over a much more serious injury, Hank simply shugs. The march of progress is inevitable, not even.

Jean doesn’t mind the delay.

At least, Scott doesn’t think she does.

They don’t make it back to their bedroom until nine.

Sweat pours down the back of Scott’s neck. He had tried to school himself during the ride up the elevator, modulating the pace of his breath and releasing the tension accumulated in his shoulders. Jean’s fingers had entwined with his. She had said nothing while Scott assured himself that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Now, as the latch of the door clicks shut behind Jean, Scott is consumed by nothing but fear.

“Scott.” Jean’s fingers splay across his chest. She tilts her chin up, rising to the tips of her toes to kiss him. “Calm down.”

“Right.” Scott breathes. His heart threatens to swell past his ribs and into Jean’s waiting fingers.

Jean rolls her eyes. This time, she wraps one hand around the back of his neck when she kisses him.

“Sit.” Jean steps away as she speaks, indicating her side of the bed. “I’ll be there in just a second.”

The bathroom door swings shut behind her.

Scott sits. Back straight, hands on his thighs, and feet firmly planted on the floor, he stares out the window.

Sun long set, the moon is nothing but a sliver in the sky. Scott breathes. He listens to the whisper of Jean’s movements: bare feet on tile, skin on towel, the rumble of the sink, the clink of glass on the countertop, a soft and feminine sigh.

Perhaps the conversation had been a figment of Scott’s imagination after all. The rattle of wind against glass protests his delusions.

The mattress dips. The duvet crinkles and rasps beneath her knees. Fingers alight on his shoulders, squeezing tightly. Knees bracket his hips. Breasts pillow against his back.

“You’re not relaxed.”

Scott swallows. His heart rate refuses to slow. Jean’s hands rove across his chest, over his shoulders, and down the length of his arms before finally settling on his stomach. His dick once again twitches to life. He stares blankly out the window.

Metal on metal, the rings scrape against the rod. Psychic fingers snap the curtains closed and flick on the lamp.

“Look.”

Scott turns over his shoulder. Jean chuckles.

“No.” Fingers twist in his hair, directing his gaze. “I meant down.”

Her body is small against his. He forgets that, sometimes, with how powerful she is. One petit hand joins the other, slender fingers plucking at Scott’s belt. Lips graze his neck. Her engagement ring catches in the light.

“You’re so hard.”

The words rattle down Scott’s spine, far more intimate than the way Jean squeezes him through his slacks. She snaps the button and drags down his zipper with fingers crowned by ruby red. Scott watches as she pulls the fly back and away to frame his erection, still encased in thin white cotton.

“I haven’t even touched you yet.”

Scott loses himself in a blitz of humiliation. He holds his breath, shoulders trembling as a damp circle appears at the tip.

“Oh,” Jean says. She isn’t surprised this time. Her tone is more pitying than anything, as if she finds him uniquely pathetic.

Panic whips into a whirlwind. His palms snap to Jean’s, four sets of fingers intertwined at Scott’s hips. Teeth scrape at Scott’s pulse.

“Love you,” Jean says. Her presence is firm in the back of his mind, as undeniable as it is shallow. A wall of patience, she lets nothing slip. Her fingers writhe beneath Scott’s. “Let me see it.”

Breath dams his throat.

Jean’s brims from her, spilling past her lips and over the shell of Scott’s ear. He allows her fingers to slip past his, nails tracing his shaft through a veil of cotton. When thumbs dip beneath the waistband, Scott finally allows his hands to return to the duvet.

Up and over, Jean hums as she pushes his underwear out of the way. “You have a good dick.”

It snaps to attention, drooling onto his shirt. A thread-thin web catches in the light.

“Don’t say that,” Scott hisses. He watches Jean’s fingers slowly curl about the shaft. Her thumb falls just shy of the head.

“What? That you’re good?” Jean asks. Unaccompanied, her voice wobbles down the halls of Scott’s mind. He receives no aid in interpreting the tone. Jean’s presence stands as a statue. “Or just dick?”

“Yeah,” Scott nods.

Her digits are cold. High-friction, her loose fist is nothing but a tease. Shaking, Scott squeezes her forearm in a desperate attempt to control what he has no right to.

“Why?” she asks. Fingertips drag frustratingly up the length of him, just enough pressure to stretch and gather the delicate skin in turn. “Not a swear.”

Jean knows why. He bucks in her hand as unwelcome thoughts flood his mind: the vee of Logan’s muscled waist, the bulge in Piotr’s spandex tights, shoulders hunched and fingers trembling in a middle school locker room, the way Jean’s lust-drunk face bobs up and down as she is fucked on the opposite side of the room. Scott stares at his own dick, nestled comfortably in Jean’s palm, and foresees every competition he will inevitably lose.

Instead of nausea, he is washed under a wave of arousal so powerful it knocks the breath from him.

A tongue clicks in Scott’s ear.

“Don’t be jealous.” Jean’s thumb circles the head. The sensation flutters from erotic to painful and back again. A shiver runs down Scott’s spine. “I like yours. It’s very handsome.”

Scott wrinkles his nose. When Jean pulls her thumb back, he watches himself twitch. Soft fingertips slide under the corona, tight striations looped lazily about the head. He’s circumcised. The remaining wrinkle of skin is more ample on the right, the thickest part of the head a hairsbreadth wider than the base, the slit angled slightly to the the left. Handsome doesn’t feel even remotely appropriate.

To be fair, Scott is not sure he would compliment any dick. It is a strange body part, really, but that doesn’t stop Scott’s mind from wandering in search of an appropriate recipient.

Logan is uncut. Of course he is. Even if Scott hadn’t seen the wrinkle ringing his tip, it would only follow logically. Scott wonders what he looks like when he’s hard. The number of uncircumcised penises Scott had seen could be counted on a single hand, and not one of them erect.

It would feel different, wouldn’t it? For Jean, that is. Not that a direct comparison would be possible. Logan is so much bigger than Scott, who barely overfills the breadth of his own palm. Both of Jean’s hands stacked atop one another is enough to completely encase him, but Logan — Scott is sure he would have ample room to breathe in Jean’s grip.

“Scott.” Jean strokes him with the tips of her fingers. “I’m gonna let you in on a secret, okay?”

Frustration twists in the pit of Scott’s gut. He grits his teeth.

“Women don’t care about cock nearly as much as men do.”

With a sharp breath, Scott’s toes curl. “Don’t say that.”

“What?” Jean asks. Scott throbs in her grip. “You don’t like it when I compliment you?”

That is not what she is doing, and she knows it. Scott keeps his mouth shut. Even worse than dick, cock is the smell of musk. It is the pendulous swing of testicles and loosely wrinkled skin and the rasp of pubic hair against lips. Jean is soft and feminine. There are some things that she should not say, and cock is one of them. Just hearing the word makes Scott think of a flaccid shaft sucked between plump lips, of flesh growing turgid upon a warm, wet tongue —

Jean giggles. “So hard.”

She strokes him now, loose and dry. He grasps pathetically at her bare knees.

“You’re making me feel bad for ignoring you for three whole days.” A hand on his thigh, nails scraping thick fabric before slipping beneath his shirt. Fingers circle his belly button. “Didn’t expect you to get so needy.”

Shame pounces, eviscerating him. Jean had thought he didn’t have a sex drive. He hadn’t. Scott doesn’t want to have a sex drive beyond the ways in which it serves his relationship with Jean. She had liked the way it was before. Jean had liked him, had chosen to marry him, and now he is nothing but putty in her hands, curled toes and stress-bulged knuckles.

“No,” he snaps. A thread, woven deep in the fabric of his mind, does as well. “I don’t need it. I’m fine.”

“Oh,” Jean says. Scott grits his teeth, sick of her. “So you’d be fine if I stopped.”

Her hands fall to the duvet. Scott’s ball around her wrists.

“Jean.”

Scott stares down at his own twitching, pathetic cock. Jean, chin tucked into the crook of Scott’s neck, follows suit.

“Yes?”

Scott realizes, with yet another rush of helpless humiliation, that he had grossly overestimated his own self-control.

“You can ask me, Scott.” Her voice is gentle, puckered lips pecking at the frantic throb of his pulse. “For anything you need.”

Everything slots into place. This isn’t about the tease, the denial, the humiliation — it is about control. It is about submission. With a frustrated sigh, he closes his eyes.

“Touch me.”

She raises her eyebrows. Scott can’t see her, but whether via intuition or cracks in the wall of Jean’s certainty, he knows. Her hands slip beneath his shirt. His throat vibrates with frustration.

“Don’t growl at me.” Jean scoffs. Scott hadn’t. At least, he hadn’t meant to. “I’m touching you.”

It isn’t what Scott had meant, but Jean knows that. Helpless, he knots his fingers in the sheets. The sight of his own dick as it escalates from the wavy-edged triangle formed by his fly and shirt hem is obscene.

Jean pinches his nipples. A thick, glassy bead wells at the tip.

“You have to tell me what you want.”

Her voice is smooth and steady. A coil of tension tightens in the pit of his stomach. Jean wants to control him. Scott wants the same — wants her to bury herself in the cracks of his mind and shape him into someone who deserves her. But with Jean pressed against his back, her small body kept perfectly out of sight as they both stare down at his lecherous cock, Scott’s intestines resound with dissonance.

“It can be about you.” Always one step ahead of him, Jean’s disembodied voice responds to his most visceral and disorganized of thoughts. “Especially if I want it to be.”

Curled knuckles graze across his nipples. Beneath the fabric of his shirt, Jean pries pleasurable sensations from him which he would rather not have to endure. Pinching, rolling, tugging, pulling Scott right to the edge of his own tolerance, the tension drawn tight in his stomach threatens to snap.

“I’m never going to know what you want unless you say it, Scott.”

A quiet, breathy sound claws over his limp tongue. The blatant falsehood does nothing to temper Scott’s reaction. His rigidity is pulled apart at the seams.

“Please,” Scott starts. His mouth is dry, his nipples burning, his heart thundering. Irrationality is rules, and Scott can follow the rules. He can be good. “Touch my dick.”

It jumps when he clenches. The lesser likeness of pleasure radiates through his core.

Jean chuckles. She kisses the warm throb of his pulse. Thick locks of ruby-red hair fleet down his chest. Her fingers curl around his base.

“Spit on it.”

Scott’s next exhale shudders with voice. It is not a moan. Jean chuckles.

Head bowed, Scott puckers. Thick, frothy saliva gathers under his tongue before dribbling from his lips. Jean knows this is what Scott does when he is alone, quick and dirty. Neither of them acknowledge it aloud. Jean may not acknowledge it at all, but Scott at least imagines that the wall of Jean’s consciousness echoes his own.

Fingers slide up his length. “More,” Jean says. Scott obeys.

Jean begins stroking him, her tightened grip still torturously slack. Scott hears himself groan and revels in the relaxation of the delicate muscles lining the back of his neck as he tips his head over Jean’s shoulder. Her free hand twists in his hair, driving him back into place.

“I told you to watch.”

Scott does. Her wrist twists confidently about the head. She only constricts at the base, bringing her fist down against the root with a kinetic force that lurches down into his balls.

Scott never lets her do this. He never wants it. Only one step shy of masturbating, Scott hates it as much as he enjoys it. He has always hated masturbating: the waste of time, the precursory frustration, the following shame, and worst of all the needy state of subjugation to his own worst impulses.

“Does it feel good?” Jean asks.

Scott swallows. She already knows. Teeth gritted, he answers regardless.

“Yes.”

As much as he resents the current arrangement, he assures himself that it could be worse. Jean could force Scott to touch himself.

Finally, her grip tightens.

Scott moans. He can’t help it, and the realization leaves him buried beneath rhythmic waves of self-hatred. He throbs in Jean’s fingers. She twists her wrist around the head and tightens her grip on the downstroke. The lower drawer of Scott’s beside table clunks open. He doesn’t react as a bottle of lubricant manifests in her hand.

Shame flows over him, drowning him in its tide, just as lube does his shaft.

It feels good. Goosebumps break out over the back of his neck, two tight fists alternating upstrokes over his length. Too good, even. Scott clutches at Jean’s petite thighs. He never lets her do this because he doesn’t need it. Sex is about Jean, not him. This isn’t even sex. Her fantasies, love and lust and confidence and humiliation, flutter past the tips of Scott’s fingers as he searches for a scapegoat to his own discomfort. He wonders if she has ever —

“Scott.” Jean interrupts his line of thought before he’s even completed it. “Don’t be jealous. You’re the only man I’ve ever been with.”

Lubricant, in a flock of rivulets, dribbles into the open hollow of her fist. Stacked at the root, her hands overtake the head.

Scott grinds his teeth.

“Stop,” Jean prompts.

She does so aloud, her presence vigilant marble in Scott’s mind. He complies.

“Thank you,” Jean says. She kisses the shell of his ear loudly.

The pace picks up, Jean squeezing and twisting and pumping until pleasure threatens to overtake him. She watches him and he watches himself.

He’s going to cum.

They both know it. The shiny head winks between her fingers as she focuses her movements. Jean casts herself in brick, walling Scott in with his own arousal. His fingers are claws against her thighs. He doesn’t know if she cares.

“You’re close.”

Scott’s chest shakes. His dick kicks. Jean’s thoughts remain a mystery to him as he approaches the edge, so much so that he locks up when he hears her next words.

“How do you think it’s gonna feel to cum without even having seen me?”

Tension coils in the pit of his stomach. “What?”

“Well.” Jean comes to a full stop, but she doesn’t hesitate. She strokes him impossibly faster, her breath hitching with the effort. “You’re about to cum from nothing but staring at your own cock.”

Breath escapes him in a series of aching shudders. Lips curl into a smile against his skin.

“That’s kinda gay, isn’t it?”

Scott’s anticipation doesn’t spare him any shock. He hovers at the edge, dropping and rising with the movements of his jaw.

“That’s not — “ he starts. Jean doesn’t relent. Humiliation burns in his cheeks. “I’m not going to do that.”

The words aren’t truthful. Ever obedient, Scott stares down at himself with eyes agape in place of his lips. The tide of his orgasm rises, inevitable.

“Oh.” Jean’s tone verges on genuine.

A tear sheds from the mourning slit. He bucks in Jean’s hand, pelvic floor fluttering, jaw clenching as he prepares to lose control.

“Sorry, Scott.”

Her grip slackens. The back of her lube-slick palm rests on his pants. Scott’s toes curl and his nails dig into Jean’s flesh as the impending orgasm burns away. His dick throbs in reflexive echo.

“Jean,” he hisses. She chokes, high-pitched and staccato. It isn’t until he feels the curl of her lips against his skin that he realizes she’s smiling. “What the hell.”

More laughter follows. Backhanded fingers playfully smack his dick. Teeth scrape his pulse. The cacophony of sensation is excruciating.

“No swearing.”

“Jean.”

Marble cracks. Annoyance slips through.

“I thought you didn’t want to cum like that.”

Slender fingers coil about his base. Scott finds himself grimly grounded in the physicality of the moment, staring down at himself. Jean’s shut off access to his higher brain functions. Fingertips meander up the length, teasing at the frenulum. Maybe he never had them in the first place.

“I don’t,” Scott says.

Intellectually, it’s the truth. Scott remains unsure of the viability.

Jean hums. She doesn’t believe him. Scott doesn’t need to lap at her fissures to know. He doesn’t really believe himself.

“Close your eyes,” Jean says.

Scott locks up.

“I’m not going to take off your visor. Relax.”

She strokes him, slow and steady, leisurely. Scott breathes in through his nose. His lids shut.

“Good boy.”

A shiver rattles violently down his spine.

The wet click of Jean’s mouth on the column of his neck doesn’t drown out the rustling. From the corner of the room behind the table, paper rustles against canvas. Scott regulates his breathing and releases the tension coiled tight around his muscle fibers. Jean’s breasts shift against the plane of his back. Fabric separates them, murmuring as a hollow thwap echoes not a foot from Scott’s nose. He tries to conjure any mental image besides his own penis.

“I love you,” Jean says.

The words flit through the spasming valves of Scott’s heart. She doesn’t wait for a response. Scott’s mind echoes the sentiment instinctively.

“Open your eyes.”

Two wide puppy-dog eyes meet his. Full lips, clean face, and angular jaw follow. The glossy print of a hairless chest rises from the cover of the magazine and burrows into the bedrock of Scott’s mind. His eyes slam shut.

“No.” He snaps, panic stinging acrid in the back of his throat. Jean doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, her breathing shallow against the thin hairs lining his neck. She waits for him. “I’m not going to — not to that.”

Empty seconds slip away. Scott grips at Jean’s thighs like a toddler to its mother.

“You don’t have to.” Jean’s fingers stroke him again lightly before coiling around the base, just enough friction to bring Scott’s frustration to a boil. “But you are going to look at it.”

He doesn’t squirm. He does not stand to storm out or rip the magazine from Jean’s fingers or yell at her or wink out of existence. The non-negotiability of her statement ties Scott’s brain into knots.

“You asked for this,” she reminds him.

This is supposed to be for her. It is for her. But Jean wouldn’t make him do this if he truly hated it.

In another sense, however, there is no way for Scott to delude himself into believing that he won’t. Jean had been the one to slither through the crevices of his mind, to make him like this. His trust in her is an ouroboros. Scott’s fear lies not in her or even himself but in the inevitability of what he has orchestrated.

He opens his eyes.

Jean only allows him to linger on the cover for a moment. Glossy stock curls beneath her thumb to reveal the table of contents. Scott restricts his gaze from wandering to the margins, lined with explicit advertisements. Sweat-soaked abdominal muscles, disembodied, are slathered across the top of the page. He turns instead to the list of articles, advice columns, and printed fiction.

Three gazes, restrained in blunt rectangles, balloon the spaces between. There is something perverted in the nudity of their naked eyes, pseudonyms for each lying placidly to the left. Scott breathes in. The spread evokes the Mona Lisa.

“Who do you want to look at first?” Jean asks. Slick fingers slide down the length of his arm. It takes Scott a moment to realize she’s holding the magazine up telekinetically. She raises one slender finger to point, gliding calmly across the page. “Jake. Derrick. Or Dustin?”

Neurons fire. An action potential can travel at up to one hundred and twenty meters per second; Scott had read this somewhere. Precious seconds tick by while he converts this figure into miles per hour. He stares into each set of eyes, attempting to divine which selection would be the least gay. He falls in the ballpark of two hundred and seventy.

“You have to pick.” Jean’s tone is carefully neutral.

Her fingers are still wrapped around his base. They wander lower, gently cradling his testicles. There is no ballpark. Scott is a man. It is all gay.

“The first one,” Scott says.

Jean clicks her tongue, tapping the page number. “Jake.”

“Jake,” Scott repeats. He bites his tongue in protest against the acidic taste of his own humiliation.

She flips the pages slowly. Scott’s gaze spasms about a half-page spread of two shirtless men kissing, tongue sliding past parted lips in silhouette. A bead of sweat rolls down the back of his neck. The stocky sheets arc in ronds de jambe not an inch from his nose. Seen in passing, a soft cock lies nestled in the crook of a hairy thigh. Scott’s own twitches.

Jake arrives, blond hair and boyish smile. Scott grits his teeth as Jean begins to stroke him again.

“Shh.” Rounded lips warm the skin behind his ear. The lack of movement is all that alerts Scott she is not speaking aloud. “Relax.”

He is not naked. By the poolside, a towel hugs his waist. A sigh of relief crawls painfully through clenched vocal cords.

“Just like that.” Jean is stroking him in earnest now. Her pace is slow, but her grip is firm. Her fingers are slick and chilly. He has no idea when she had added lube. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

He is Jean’s type. His waist is slender and his smile, slightly lopsided, is charming. Soft waves of muscle billow beneath the skin, visible but lacking in the harsh definition that is common in the men Jean is surrounded by. The taper of his chest is subtle, but not feminine, and Scott finds his gaze drawn to the angular knobs of his hips.

Arousal pools in the pit of his stomach. Jean tugs at his dick: slow, deliberate, incessant. A single page fans by, arched in port de bras. Scott is not ready. The image of Jake bent at the waist, lower back arched, cudgels him anyways.

Dulled, his own urgency clubs him in echo. For a moment Scott sees himself from the outside, Jean’s body clinging to his back, hand sliding under his shirt, fist jerking between his thighs. He sees the magazine, too, the bulge of thigh and angle of shoulder and cleft of ass, the ass, the hand slipped demurely out of sight between his legs encompassing more and more of Scott’s reality as Jean shepherds his mind carefully back into his body.

“Good boy.” The heat leaves Scott frazzled, in electrical overload, excess voltage arcing from his face to his feet. Static repolarizes him.

The static is Jean. She has popped the bubble of repulsion and left Scott in the vacuum of his own attraction, two magnets of opposite poles. She jerks him off, the energy of the motion zinging down from her shoulder and wrist, the action base and degenerate in a way Scott lacks the ability to describe. Jean is behind him and a man is in front of him, absorbing the current of Scott’s lust, and nothing is how it is supposed to be. Jean holds Scott in her hand and arranges him in perfect antithesis of the man he is.

Hot, viscous shame slides through his veins. He grasps at the sheets. He is going to cum.

Jean’s hand withdraws.

Scott cannot stop himself from moving this time. He pitches forward, eyes squeezed shut, toes curling and a low, tense noise spilling from his lips.

“Please.”

He needs it. Thighs tight, stomach taught, sweat dripping down the back of his neck, the sensation of his body attempting orgasm only to fail wreaks havoc across his senses.

Jean knows. Knuckles stroke his thigh through stiff cotton. “Please what?”

She is enjoying herself. Scott attempts to ride the idea, circling his arms around its neck. He strangles it instead.

The page flips again. A quarter of it is occupied by a soft cock, shot close proximity and printed with enough detail that Scott can identify the full, heavy pores that house the roots of pubic hair. Scott breathes. It should be disgusting.

“Oh.” Jean’s teasing him, light fingers dragging up and down the underside of his cock. The sheets twist violently between his fingers. In Jean’s, the length of him bobs upward only to collapse once again into the cradle of Jean’s hand. “I think you like something here.”

She knows exactly what Scott is looking at. She knows the depths to which she has humiliated him. Hovering at the edge, he grits his teeth in silent resistance.

Jean pulls away again. The movement is small, miniscule even, but Scott feels the last of his fight melt away. It circles the drain, trickling through the foundation and into the earth of him. He whines.

“Tell me,” Jean says. She is teasing, squeezing his balls through their fabric prison. It isn’t enough. “What you’re looking at.”

Scott tries. He stares at the magazine. His lips refuse to move. He tries to conjure the word in his mind, but the more he thinks about it the foggier the concept becomes.

“I can’t.”

She knows. Scott is trying, genuinely. A hum caresses his cheek.

“Show me.”

Scott raises one shaky hand. Fingertips brush the two-dimensional head. He sucks in one shaky breath. Glossy stock moans around the outline of the shaft. His heart pounds out a shaky rhythm. A thumb kisses the slit.

The action is a thousand times more debauched than a single word could ever be.

“Good boy.”

Scott groans as Jean’s hand envelops his cock. He had almost forgotten about it. A wind whips through his mind, weathering the statue of Jean’s presence in an instant. The shock of her arousal sends him tumbling towards the edge once again.

Arms about his waist, Jean pulls him back. He soaks in the pool of her arousal and wants to cry and cum in equal parts. She flips the page and he is hard on his back, legs splayed and gaze confident. He knows how beautiful he is, his everything, his balls and hole and cock on display for Scott to enjoy.

He does.

Except he is not the only one looking. Jean strokes him, slow and steady, and he turns his attention to her. She lets him, and Scott feels the weight of her gaze on this man’s thighs, shoulders, and the buttons of his nipples. She enjoys it, too.

He tumbles into the pit of emotion that is the only logical conclusion to being cuckolded by a pornographic magazine. Jean does not stop him. She does not show him her thoughts about his cock, but Scott does not need her to.

Scott knows the cock in the magazine is bigger than his. He touches it anyways, or the blobs of ink arranged in its echo. He imagines what it would feel like in his hand, if it would sit in his palm just a little heavier, its shape just a little fuller than Scott’s own. He thinks about what it would feel like between his lips, the taste of bitter sweat and arousal he has only experienced secondhand from Jean’s lips fresh on his own.

His frenulum burns. Jean is stroking it, tracing circles against him with the tip of her index finger. Saliva pools under his tongue. His brow furrows and a series of gasps and groans spill from him, his thoughts a mess of shame and lust and pain. It is not until Jean mutters, oh, wow, that he aligns his attention with hers.

A few thick, white beads leak from his slit. Jean catches them on her pointer finger.

His abdominal muscles flutter. Scott had not cum. He sits in the eye of his own raging desperation and contemplates the mysteries of the human body. The moment passes too quickly.

This time, Scott speaks without prompting. “Jean,” he breathes. “Please.”

She is not touching him. One finger is extended, Scott’s own ejaculate creeping slowly towards the crook of her first knuckle. She sighs on his neck.

“Please what?”

He closes his eyes. Jean allows him the respite. “Let me cum.”

“You want to?” She waits for him to open his eyes. The information arrives from everywhere and nowhere. He looks down.

Jean allows him to witness her cycle through the options. Even though you haven’t seen me, you’re looking at a man, thinking about a man, his dick, his cock, his eyes, even though it’s gay, because it is, you want to be a fag for me, “Scott?”

His throat trembles. “Yes.”

She flips the page. His balls hang between his thighs, dick below. The tip descends just low enough to kiss his chin, aligned in syzygy with the camera lens. Gentle fingers pull his cheeks apart. He is hairless.

Jean raises her finger to his lips. The taste is bitter. She squeezes tightly, wet fist tugging his depraved pleasure inexorably from him as he mouths at her fingers. Saliva lolls down his chin.

She is going to let him finish this time. Scott can feel it, and he lets himself linger in his own perverted enjoyment, raking his gaze across the handsome face and awkward grin and the bulk of his thighs and the curve of his cock which veers slightly to the left. He wonders what it would feel like to hold his balls, smooth and warm, what it would feel like for them to kick and buck in his palm, what those loose folds of skin would feel like on his tongue. Scott’s gaze wanders up the cleft of his ass, and he is going to cum, and —

He flinches, closing his eyes at the last second.

This is a cowardice Jean will not allow. She rummages inside of him, peeling his lids open from the inside out.

Scott stares down at the furl nestled between the model’s cheeks. He has almost certainly been fucked there before, the fat head of a cock violating that tight little ring of muscle. The image is obscene, but it is not what sends Scott over the edge. Instead, it is the violation of Jean’s mind inside his own, phantom hands pulling at his muscles like the strings of a marionette. It is the knowledge that Scott’s choices, his fear, his shame, his avoidance are allowed to him only by her indulgence.

At the end of the day, Jean controls him completely.

Scott erupts across his own shirt.

Jean clicks her tongue. She kisses his neck, the sensation blooming across the surface of Scott’s exhausted skin. He leans back and stares mercifully up at the ceiling.

“Good?” Jean asks.

Sightless, Scott squeezes one of Jean’s thighs. He answers with nothing more than a shaky exhale.

Jean laughs. She holds him. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

Jean does not allow Scott to return the favor.

He protests, if for no other reason than that is how it is supposed to go. She kisses him, slender body pressed tightly to his own, and tells him that she does not want it. The moment has come and gone. No pun intended.

They stand in the shower. Steam, clinging to ruby quartz, fogs Scott’s vision in near totality. He finds the sentiment difficult to believe.

He does not say as much.

He doesn’t need to. Jean raises her eyebrows. “Because you understand everything there is to know about female sexuality.”

A beat of waterlogged confusion passes before Scott realizes that she is being sarcastic.

“No,” he says. Jean’s expression is tinged with pity. He chooses to believe this read is either inaccurate or lacking in nuance. There are many things about Jean he does not understand. “I don’t.”

Washed, dressed, and tucked under the sheets, the two of them stare up at the ceiling in the dark. He had watched Jean slip the magazine into the bottommost drawer of the dresser on the left side. This is Jean’s side. Its companions had subsequently emerged from the mouth of her bag in a flock, at least three by Scott’s count, and migrated civilly to their new home.

His lubricant had followed. Somehow more embarrassing than the pornography, the little bottle had disappeared into Jean’s space with a final thunk. Jean hadn’t looked at him.

He can tell from the pattern of her breathing that she lies awake next to him. He doesn’t know whether she joins him in contemplation of phantom patterns swimming across the surface of the ceiling. But it brings him comfort to imagine she is, so he does.

The message had been clear. The erection of such a boundary communicates more efficiently than words. The only totems of Scott’s sexuality remain hidden and enclosed within Jean’s private space.

He is under her control.

Worms burrow into the pit of his stomach. He fails to identify the emotion they feed from.

“I’m happy.”

Jean’s voice is quiet in the dark.

“What?”

She turns. Invisible, the rustle of fabric is all that implies her movement.

“I’m happy that you’re willing to do what you need.” Pitched just above a whisper, Scott has to hold his breath to hear her. He jumps when her fingers intertwine with his. “Even if you have to do mental gymnastics to get there.”

Scott chews on the words. They spring off his molars like rubber, deceptively unyielding.

“What?” he says again.

Jean breathes. “I’m happy you’re happy.”

Scott doesn’t know if he is happy. He doesn’t often think about such things. The emotion had never made it high on the list of his priorities.

The silence settles.

Scott cannot see her in the dark. But in the glass closet of his mind, he imagines her reaction as one other than pity.

Chapter Text

On Christmas Eve, Scott lies in bed alone.

Moonlight spills across the floor. Its source is framed in the lunette, a red semicircle echoed and rotated in Scott’s vision. Grainy voices in exaggerated pitch creep from down the hallway.

Ten ‘til midnight, he wonders if the kids are still awake or if they had neglected to turn off the television. In Ororo’s absence, Logan had been the one to supervise the milk-and-cookie procurement and plating process. He had made hot cocoa in a soup pot. The last Scott had seen, he’d been passed out with his arms crossed over his chest and head tipped over the back of the couch, open-mouth snoring eclipsing the soundtrack to Frosty the Snowman at regular intervals. A Sharpie-wielding hand had been poised over his cheeks, frozen for Scott’s approach.

Scott had pretended not to notice.

Jean had been called away on the same mission as Ororo. She had phoned yesterday to say they wouldn’t make it back until the 26th. At the time, Scott had thought he had taken the news well.

Now, in the dark, he isn’t so sure.

Four days is not much time in the grand scheme of things — five, including tomorrow. But he had always had mixed feelings about Christmas. Holidays are difficult when you don’t have a family. He ends the train of thought and spares himself the misery.

Blurred by ruby, Scott stares up at the clear sky and pretends to lose himself in disappointed sentimentality. At forty degrees, chances of a white Christmas remain slim. In terms of precipitation, Scott had heard it was the driest year since 1970. Jean will be disappointed.

He misses her. He misses being the leader. But most of all, Scott misses his foot.

Fingers curl in the wiry hair above his boxers. His gaze shifts to the left-hand side of the dresser before slowly descending. There are other objects in there, Scott knows, beyond the five magazines and bottle of lubricant. He hadn’t even seen all of the magazines yet.

Discomfort pools in the pit of Scott’s belly. They are still having sex. It had even been normal, sometimes, the wet click of kissing in the vestibule while she rode him in the dark. But the routine was in flux and the boundaries rapidly are expanding. Some part of Scott had thought he would fold in on himself after that first night. He had certainly tried to.

Jean hadn’t let him.

The mattress dips as he rolls over. His cast scrapes against the fitted sheet, peeking out from beneath the duvet. The moments are gone now, of course, but the memories remain. They should terrify him. But as Scott stares at the sliver of light slicing into his vision from beneath the door, he finds his internal landscape suspiciously lacking in fear.

Scott could tie himself in knots trying to rationalize his suspicion away. Did Jean intentionally wipe away his revulsion? Or is its absence an obligatory companion to being attracted to men? Or perhaps his experience is a trick of the mind and the emotion refuses to manifest because Scott does not expect for it to.

There is a certain freedom in being denied one’s own choices, after all.

Hidden in darkness, Scott’s lips curl into a scowl. The phrasing of that thought leaves him with disgust to spare.

Perhaps it isn’t just the phrasing.

To Scott’s chagrin, the basement light flicks on. He descends the stairs, teeth gritted.

The place has become much less derelict in the prior weeks. His shoes click against granite stepping stones speckled in pink-and-gray. The wire racks have in some places woven into diamond-dotted trellises or rippling wicker, both in off-white. The light above is soft, shrouding the room in a facsimile of natural light.

Jean’s addition to the landscape radiates out from the corner. Potted ivy hugs the stones and coils up the shelves. A potted plant, Jean had explained, is both able to grow on its own while remaining contained and, as such, easy to remove.

Scott crouches to thumb heart-shaped leaves. Lively tendrils cling to his fingers.

Lids snap open. Scott sees himself in third person, sitting at the table with a magazine spread out on the glass. He is naked, save for his cast and one sock, and hunched at the shoulders. One hand is wrapped around his cock. The other tugs at his nipple. Jean tells him to stop, and he places both palms on his knees. Lubricant gums the sparse hair.

Jean had made him tease himself for nearly an hour. There and back again, mouth dry and pulse throbbing over images of naked men. It had been arousing, of course, from a purely chemical perspective, and Jean’s gently-delivered commands had filled the cracks in Scott’s fractured self-perception.

He turns his head towards the dresser, skewered by moonlight. The bottom-most drawers remain shrouded in darkness. There are objects in that drawer, Scott knows, beyond the magazines and his lube. He swallows, a sweat breaking out across his brow as fingers curl in the waistband of his sweats.

Jean had removed a plastic phallus from that drawer.

The sight had been a shock which hadn’t let up when she had crawled atop their bed and proceeded to penetrate herself with it.

Scott relives the moment. The viewpoint had been novel for both of them, Jean watching her own fingers wrapped around its featureless base and synthetic testicles through Scott’s eyes. Its size had been unintimidating, inflating in Scott’s mind only when its artificial length was buried inside of her and hidden out of sight.

In reality, it had been much smaller than the ones in Scott’s magazines, and perhaps not bigger than Scott himself. It had still been more attractive than Scott’s, of course. He imagines all dildos are manufactured to mirror the platonic ideal of cock.

Watching her masturbate, palms positioned meekly on his knees, had been an exercise in self-restraint. The motion she had used to fuck herself, a jerk of the wrist a roll of the hips, had been wholly familiar. He hates that he hadn’t known about it. Even in the moment, the zing of exhilaration had barely cushioned his frustration.

Eventually, he had begged. Jean had informed Scott that he would not be cumming before her, and that Scott should thank her for allowing him to watch.

He is hard.

All at once, the unpleasant reality of the condition hits him. It’s too late at night for this. He rolls over, sheets rustling. Fabric cocoons around his cast. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep.

A few weeks ago, he would have thought it impossible to sleep with his erection pressing insistently into the mattress. But he knows he can. Jean had done this to him the day before she had left. Scott had buried his face between her thighs, pushed his way past thin lace panties, and serviced her. He had made her cum twice, her hands buried in his hair while Scott’s had remained obediently on her thighs.

Scott chews his lip. Layers of recollection do nothing to dull the fantasy Jean had forced upon him. One moment his mouth is buried in Jean’s pussy and the next he is being tugged and turned until he comes nose-to-nose with Logan’s cock and its head is shoved unceremoniously into his mouth. The continuance of motion is automatic, tongue thrusting, forward push, and then Scott is bobbing, gagging, pulled in until his nose is buried in a bramble of masculine hair.

He had sucked Logan’s cock.

In the privacy of his mind, of course, and at Jean’s behest. But Scott had done it. And he had liked it.

Conscious thought stills the rocking of his hips.

Jean hadn’t let him touch himself afterwards. She had cradled him, kissed his ruined lips, and allowed him to rut against her thigh. She had allowed him to think he was going to cum, and right when Scott had stood before the edge, she had pushed him away.

She had shepherded him into the shower. Hands and cloth had soaped his skin, lingering on each in a long list of spots penultimate in sensitivity: inner thighs, testicles, nipples, and humiliatingly, between his cheeks. Each touch had been tender and methodical, undertaken for the primary purpose of Scott’s pleasure.

When she had washed his penis, it had been clinical.

That night, Jean had put him to sleep with a self-satisfied smile. He had fallen asleep hard, Jean cradled in the spoon of his body. His erection had drooled into his underwear before eventually soaking into Jean’s. His dreams had been made vibrant by emerald greens and the scent of musk, and when he had awoken the next morning, it had been to the sensation of Jean wrapped tightly around him.

He had spilled inside of her without fanfare. No delay, no tease, just Jean holding him as he had fallen apart.

It had been, probably, the longest orgasm of his life. Scott had never kept track of such things, primarily because the vast majority of his previous orgasms had been strictly uniform.

The mattress protests. Scott ruts into it regardless. When he breathes in, he swears he can smell her on the sheets.

He is shocked that his attraction to men, cultivated as it is, had not ruined his attraction to Jean. He undresses her in his mind and the image is lovely. Scott clutches at the sheets as he thinks about her lips, the thrum of her pulse beneath her skin, and the swell of her breasts in his hand.

He should stop.

Scott knows this. His attempts to crystalize that knowledge into words fail miserably. He turns to stare into the void again and tells himself a series of untruths: giving into the impulse would be unfair to Jean, would injure his public image, would shine a light on his poor self-control. Except Jean wants him to be more sexually open, no one would know save for Scott, and self-control simply does not factor into the equation.

Jean did this to him.

For a moment, Scott is doused with the ice-water thought that he could be rutting into the mattress, wanton and horny, while Jean is dead. The horror of that scenario is enough to still his movements for a long moment, but as much as Scott attempts to cling to his own limp anxiety, it slips between his fingers. As psychically flaccid as Scott is, he can still feel her somewhere in the distance through their psychic rapport. He would know.

Instead, Scott’s thoughts turn back to his lube in her drawer. He doesn’t need it; he could use spit. The bottle is sitting next to the stack of magazines and her toy. He pushes himself onto his forearms, the movements of his hips swelling in size, growing more intentional. He hates Jean’s secrets.

He could take whatever he wanted from her drawer. It’s not as if he isn’t allowed — it’s his room as much as it is hers. The lube at least belongs to him. They hadn’t spoken about it, but Scott is sure Jean would have stated so explicitly if he truly weren’t allowed.

He could turn on the light and stroke himself to one of the magazines, if he wanted. He could sit in one of their high-backed chairs, legs spread, and revel in the wrongness of it all. His attraction to men is undeniable: he enjoys the photography, sure, but so too does he enjoy the hand-drawn comics and the gawky fiction. He likes the advertisements and articles, a snapshot into a culture he does not understand and never will, full of specialty bars and cruising etiquette and phone sex lines. To Scott, it’s as fantastical as The Lord of the Rings.

Jean had watched him. She had fucked herself to the image of Scott’s debasement. She had seen his appreciation for a broad chest, his delight in imagining a flat tongue sliding over a flat nipple, his seemingly insatiable appetite for skin and muscle and cock — and she had enjoyed it.

His attraction to men is undeniable. Its presence seems to redouble his arousal each time he experiences it, shame slowly eroding away but not the novelty, not the unnaturalness, not the degeneracy.

It is wrong, and Jean had made him this way.

He rocks into the sheets like a desperate teenager. All at once, the words come to him: it is not for him. Scott is not allowed his private indulgence in these thoughts because they aren’t for him.

Slowly, Scott rolls onto his back. He breathes in deeply. It’s enough to give him clarity. To chase pleasure for pleasure’s sake is nothing but mindless hedonism. But to do so for another person — to pursue pleasure with structure, with rigor, with self-discipline — is another task entirely.

Scott cannot peg why exactly that is. But he stares up at the ceiling, holds his breath for a long few seconds, and knows he is correct.

Cock hard, Scott closes his eyes and falls asleep.

“Merry Christmas.”

Scott registers the dip in the mattress before the words. Alarmed, he snaps to attention and nearly smacks into Jean.

She blinks. His lids cling to his eyes just as sweat clings to the back of his neck. He had been deep in REM sleep, dreaming, but the details slip away as he tries to recall them. Sunlight casts the room in pink.

“Hello.”

“Sorry,” Scott breathes. Her hair is wet, waffle-textured robe wrapped around her shoulders. She smells like rain on grass. “You’re back.”

“Got in an hour ago. Everything went well. I can tell you about it later.” She combs hair off his forehead. The gesture is surprisingly tender. “Thought the shower would’ve woken you up. Guess you needed it.”

Scott’s mouth goes dry as Jean leans in to kiss him. A tight, insistent pressure lingers in the pit of his stomach. He’s hard.

The realization sends his anxiety spiking in exponent. Scott clings to the fading remnants of his dream just long enough to maintain his certainty that there had been one. The airy scent of sweat solidifies as a ball in his throat.

“Oh,” Jean says. She touches his chest. Scott burns. “Nice dream?”

“What,” Scott says, even though he knows what she is referencing. The response comes by reflex. Jean raises her eyebrows.

“It’ll have to wait. Sorry. The kids are all waiting.”

Jean stands, combing wet hair from the back of her neck. It twists into a thin cord on her shoulder. Scott realizes, with a dull sort of horror, that the angle of the light pouring in through the open windows is distinctly acute. It must be at least nine in the morning.

“What time is it?” Scott asks aloud even as he turns towards his bedside table.

“Almost 9:30,” Jean answers.

The clock reads 9:22. Scott had slept through his alarm by over three hours. A pounding heat courses through his thighs. His scrotum draws taut, clinging to his leg like an affluent woman clutching scandalized at her pearls. He groans.

“I need a shower.”

“Maybe a cold one.”

Turned away at an oblique angle, Scott can barely make out the quirk of her lips. Frustration kicks in before his conscious thoughts can catch up.

It’s not an inappropriate suggestion.

So, on Christmas morning, Scott holds his breath under freezing water and does his best to ignore the way his stomach aches as his erection goes down.

“Okay, that’s enough Christmas music.”

Kitty, sprawled at the foot of the tree, begins to fuss with the dials on her brand new boombox. Static crackles as stations fade in and out, music lingering just long enough for Kitty to identify it before plowing ahead to the next station.

Scott breathes in, relaxing his shoulders and tilting his head over the back of the armchair. It had been a long morning. He and Jean had, indeed, been the last to arrive. Jean had been the one to accept the blame, not that anyone had been upset. The kids, clustered on the carpet of the lounge, had opened their presents while the adults had sipped on coffee.

Now long cold, Scott stares down at the last inch in the bottom of his mug. As soon as they had entered the room, Logan had, with gaze turned away, extended a mug to Jean. A muddy-red hue, it had been fixed exactly as she likes it. Blinking, Jean had thanked him. Piotr had scrambled to do the same for Scott, black.

“Do not tell me you are already sick of the holiday,” Piotr says. The volume of his voice, although not particularly loud, still makes Scott’s eardrums twitch in protest. “When it has barely begun.”

“I was sick of it, like, three weeks ago.” Kitty kicks her legs back and forth, cheek propped up onto her fist. She wrinkles her nose at the squeaky voices of Alvin & The Chipmunks before moving to the next station. “but I held out. For the presents, obviously.”

Piotr frowns. “That’s not much in the Christmas spirit.”

“I’m Jewish,” Kitty reminds him.

Logan snorts. Piotr, eyebrows drawn, simply responds, “Yes.”

“Come off it, Pete. She’s just bein’ a kid.”

The ornate chandelier rocks, ever so subtly, in the air above Scott. He had just opened his eyes. Scott cannot recall closing them.

“I’m not a kid,” Kitty snaps.

“Coulda fooled me,” Logan rumbles.

The conversation is strange. Logan doesn’t value being nice. Jean breathes in deeply, curled against Scott’s torso. He can feel her eyelashes drag on the fabric of his shirt. She fights sleep, not having done so the previous night. Scott knows this intuitively. On the other side of the room, Ororo appears only marginally more energetic.

Classical music, slightly too grainy to be relaxing, fills the lounge. When Scott finally lifts his head, Kitty is crouched on her knees with her arms crossed defiantly over her chest. Logan, perched on a stool on the opposite side of the tree, struggles to contain laughter.

Near the mouth of the room, the Professor and Kurt are chatting at a low volume. Remy leans over Rogue’s chair, hip cocked against the back. Jean’s fingers twist into the fabric of Scott’s shirt. Her mug sits on the side table, cold and unfinished. As she shifts, socked toes burrowing into the crack between the cushions, Logan’s gaze doesn’t leave Kitty.

Logan is consciously choosing not to look at him. Or Jean. Or the two of them together, potentially.

“I’m an X-Man.”

“Don’t mean you’re not a kid.”

Kitty fumes, exhaling sharply through her nose. Scott furrows his eyebrows. He can’t figure out what they’re really talking about. Kitty is sixteen. She is, by all applicable definitions, a child.

“Scott.”

Jean blinks slowly, turning to meet his gaze. She yawns. “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

“Okay,” he says despite having no intention of abiding by the request.

He kisses her forehead. She sighs.

“Glad I made it home,” she mutters. “Wouldn’t’ve been Christmas without you.”

Scott’s heart thumps. He holds her tightly. Words fail him. Across the room, Logan snorts. Scott chooses to believe this is at something Kitty had said. She’s fussing with the dials again.

Eventually, he swallows. “I have something for you.”

The adult gifts are all poised on the mantle, a fire hazard. But Scott knows the separation is psychologically helpful for the kids — Kitty is the oldest who had stayed over the holiday, with the vast majority being under twelve. He ignores the prickled heat which breaks out over his shoulders at the thought.

Jean nods, rubbing at her eyes. She turns towards the fireplace, then begins to ask, “Kitty — “

“No,” Scott cuts her off, reaching into his pocket. “Here.”

The box is wrapped in dark blue paper and dotted with little white polar bears. Scott had figured those were the colors, at least, since black and pink seemed an odd combination for wrapping paper. Kitty turns to them, eyes wide, followed quickly by Piotr. Out of the corner of his eye Scott notices Logan begrudgingly do the same. Embarrassment heats the back of his neck.

Jean smiles, thumb tracing the hilled arch of the box beneath the paper. She peels the tape up slowly, carefully sparing each beady-eyed bear from being torn. The hinge on the velvet box creaks as she pushes it open.

Her eyes light up. She smiles. “They’re beautiful.”

Scott’s palm serves as a table while she swaps the new earrings for the old. Back straight, she turns from right to left to allow Scott to admire the new set, rubies kissing the soft skin beneath her earlobes.

“Well?” she asks. “How do they look?”

The question is directed at Scott, but Kitty answers. “Really pretty.”

Scott doesn’t protest. She would know better than he does, for a number of reasons. At least one of which is that he always thinks Jean looks pretty.

Jean rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter me, Summers,” she mutters quietly, leaning in to kiss him. “You don’t need to win any more points.”

He hadn’t been attempting to flatter her. But she kisses him long and deep and he cradles her by the small of her back. Scott shivers when he feels her tongue on his lower lip.

Both Rogue and Ororo compliment his taste. Scott doesn’t mention that Remy had all but selected them, accepting the compliments with a solemn nod. This is also how he acknowledges the wink Remy shoots him from the opposite side of the room.

“Kitty, could you get my gift for Scott from the mantle?”

She stares. “Why me? Ororo’s already standing.”

Ororo, to her credit, doesn’t move. Jean smiles, and says kindly, “Because that’s what the youngest person does.”

Kitty frowns, unhappy to be infantilized once again. “I didn’t do it when everyone else was here!”

“Because you weren’t the youngest then,” Jean explains. Scott nods. He is well aware of this rule. He remembers crouching next to the tree and reading labels for Alex, who would then scuttle across the living room to deliver gifts to their parents.

“None of those are even for me!”

“I would be happy to pass out the gifts,” Kurt offers. His offer is immediately but politely declined by a chorus of voices about the room.

Kitty had changed the station, although Scott isn’t sure when. The Professor is conspicuously absent, and Hank appears to have disappeared with him. Scott finds himself unable to process the cacophony of voices for a heavy moment, instead overcome with nausea.

“You sure ‘bout that?”

Eyes wide, Kitty leaps from the floor. Ororo is smiling, shaking her head. Cool knuckles graze the knobs bulging from the back of his neck. Relaxation burbles down his spine, the dam cracking as he exhales. Kitty clutches a wrinkled gift in front of her.

“There’s more,” she says, eyes wide. Scott is fairly certain she had received gifts for Hanukkah, as well. An ugly, twisted emotion lashes at the pit of his stomach. Silently, Jean turns to him and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“We should treasure childhood while we can, shouldn’t we?”

The pronouns rattle around in Scott’s brain. Jean had spoken quietly, and he realizes only in retrospect that her lips had not moved.

“Yes.” Scott agrees, not because he understands the truth of the words but because he respects that Jean is often correct about such matters.

“Well y’ain’t gettin’ it if you don’t do your damn job, kid.”

Kitty agrees. She insists, however, on relocating all the remaining gifts from the mantle to the tree. It’s more proper that way. Scott agrees, although he cannot say he finds himself particularly enthused for the ordeal. He has work he needs to do, tasks he’s been ignoring. He only thinks of these things in effort to ignore his primary impulse, which is to lie in bed and stare pathetically up at the ceiling. He wants another cup of coffee.

The carafe, guided by invisible forces, begins the pour just as Scott finishes the thought. The mug alights delicately in his hands. Jean combs fingers through his hair.

He stares down at the cup. Reflexive guilt overcomes him, and he recalls what Remy had said to him a few weeks back. He should treasure Jean. He takes her for granted too often.

“Stop,” Jean chastizes. “You’re fine, Summers.”

When he looks up, Kitty is standing in front of him with a bright grin slicked across her lips. She presents Scott with a brightly-wrapped box not much larger than the one Scott had given Jean.

“Thank you,” he says.

Everyone watches as he tears the paper off. Scott hates the sound it makes. Jean watches, too, absentmindedly folding the polar bear paper into a neat square in her lap. When Scott pops the cardboard tab out and slides the lid open, a pale-faced digital watch stares up at him.

“A watch,” Scott says. The metal is cool against his fingers, its structure surprisingly bulky. The words feel stupid as soon as he lifts it from its styrofoam nest. Everyone can see what it is.

“Yeah,” Jean says. “It has five alarms, a camera, and once you set the date it’ll adjust for daylight savings automatically. And the Professor helped fit a speech-to-text system and a SIM card inside. So you can text me without T9.”

Scott hates T9. He is immediately left speechless by the thoughtfulness of this gift.

“There’s a camera in that thing?” Kitty asks.

“Not a very good one,” Jean admits.

“Still,” Kitty sighs wistfully. “I love living in the future.”

Scott thinks about the towers, a horror experienced in sync by an entire country, enabled by the twenty-four hour news cycle and followed by the most draconian legislation of his lifetime. Scott is wary of the future at best.

Through whatever passive telepathic connection Jean maintains with him, Scott experiences her urge to smack him like a psychic slap to the face.

“There’s another one for you,” Scott says. His mouth is dry.

Kindly, Jean replies, “Let’s go around first.”

“Right.”

Across the room, Logan’s gaze drills through to Scott’s core.

When Kitty is out of earshot, Jean breaks the staring contest. “You better have something besides that to give her when all is said and done, Logan.”

He grins, turning his gaze from Scott to Jean. “What, Red?” he asks. “You don’t think she’ll like it?”

Logan grins, sharp canines flashing between his lips. Scott stares.

He tries to hold himself together.

The rest of the gift-giving is uneventful. Scott receives a few books, two sweaters, an electric razor, a bag of jerky, and a personal massager which can be hung over the back of his neck. Jean informs Scott that his second gift, an assortment of novels he thought she might enjoy, had been appropriately thoughtful.

The jerky is from Logan. All are subjected to the fate of this gift save for Ororo, Rogue, and Jean, who each receive a sturdy pair of gloves. It isn’t until Rogue opens hers and comments that she would’ve preferred the jerky to yet another set of gloves that Scott identifies the pattern as gendered.

Kitty is highly unenthused to be included in the jerky category. When questioned on this, Logan simply replies, “Wait a couple years and maybe I’ll move you over.”

Judging by the way she retreats to her boombox, facing wholly away from Logan, the response is not appreciated. Logan, in contrast, cannot seem to wipe the grin off his face.

Scott tries the jerky. He doesn’t hate it. When he informs Kitty of this, she only turns the volume louder.

He is relieved when the ordeal comes to an end. Hank re-appears with food, and is almost immediately pummeled with presents. Some of the children begin to filter in and out, satiating themselves with finger foods and apple cider heated in a large crockpot. Ororo disappears at one point only to be spotted out the second-story window, drawing their attention to a radio control plane flying next to her.

It begins to drizzle, a balmy forty-five degrees. Jean falls asleep on his shoulder and continues long after Scott’s neck has gone stiff and his lower back pleads with him to stand. He pushes past his own physical and psychological frustration in an attempt to cherish the moment. He would’ve retreated before lunch if she hadn’t been using him as a pillow.

At some point, Logan refills his coffee. Scott thanks him. Logan grunts.

Jean finally lifts her head from Scott’s shoulder a number of hours later.

“What time is it?” she asks, voice hoarse.

“Nearly two.”

She pushes herself upright, and Scott immediately stands to stretch. “Sorry,” Jean mutters. Scott shakes his head.

Across the room, Hank and Kurt are immersed in a deep discussion of something vaguely philosophical which Scott quickly decides he has no interest in. Ororo is perched on the couch next to Logan, bare feet nestled beneath his thigh. She had fallen asleep earlier as well. Logan is still staring at Scott, his gaze much softer now. He had poured at least two shots of his whiskey into his coffee about twenty minutes before. Scott doesn’t think anyone else had noticed.

Kitty is still playing music, although the volume is much more subdued than before. She sits curled in an armchair across from Scott, tongue peeking out as she tests each color in her new gel pen set in descending spirals down the first page of her new journal. Both gifts had been selected by Jean.

“Sorry,” Jean says. “Was supposed to try to give you your other present, but — “ she cuts herself off with a yawn. “I think it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” She blinks, slowly, then rubs at her eyes. “I need to call my parents.”

Scott tilts his head. He recognizes the song. Britney Spears, in her new and more sexually liberated era. Apparently. Scott had seen the music video in the kids’ TV room a few weeks back and had not been impressed. Provocativeness for its own sake had never sat well with him. And behavior like that sets a bad example for young women.

But Scott had liked the song, and the snake. So he had let the affair play out.

“We can just do it after.”

Jean raises her eyebrows. The corners of her lips turn down as if trying not to laugh. “It’s, um. It’s a bit involved. We’ll get around to it tomorrow.”

Scott furrows his eyebrows. Jean continues to stare at him, head tilted down as if he should be understanding something left unsaid. She glances down at Scott’s lap, about the room, and then back at his face. The realization hits Scott like a brick to the face.

“Ah,” he says.

“Ah,” Jean repeats. She combs hair behind her ear. Scott’s mind begins to race. It cannot possibly be anything normal, but he struggles to think of anything so enticing, taboo, or otherwise special it couldn’t be incorporated into his and Jean’s current level of exploration. In fact, it’s far more likely to be the next step, which Scott —

“Professor Summers, do you actually like this song?” His thoughts are still scrambled when he turns to Kitty. She turns back to her notebook, and mutters just quietly enough for Scott to make out, “That’s kinda gay.”

Jean bristles. Much delayed, Scott understands the comment is in relation to the mindless tapping of his foot. A mistake. Sweat breaks out on the back of his neck.

Before Jean can respond, Scott announces, “I’m not gay.”

He says this because it is true. But the strangeness of his response — the literality, the obviousness, and the uncomfortably loud volume — only occur to him after nearly every other person in the room turns to stare at him. Kitty joins, eyebrows furrowed and lips parted in confusion.

“I also,” Scott continues, heart racing, “don’t like the song.”

A lie. He does like the song. He also enjoys Destiny’s Child, but Scott understands there are some pleasures best kept to oneself.

Unfortunately, Scott has no idea how to spare himself from this one.

Jean, a hand on his thigh, rescues him. “That was not a kind choice of words, Kitty.”

Her tone is colder than Scott would have expected. It isn’t until the sound of his mug rattling against its coaster rings throughout the room that he recognizes Jean’s attempt to restrain an anger that is completely disproportionate to the situation.

Kitty’s eyes go wide. She turns back to her notebook, shoulders curled inwards. Scott feels bad for her. Lips pressed into a thin, unhappy line, she mutters something that begins with, “Not my fault your boyfriend,” and ends completely inaudibly. But the press of teeth into her lower lip, dropping of her jaw, and little quirked eyebrow leave the word which finishes her sentence painfully visible.

Even for Scott, it’s impossible not to fill in the blank.

“Excuse me?” Jean snaps.

Logan turns over his shoulder, and, in almost perfect synchrony, says, “Watch it, kid.”

Kitty continues scribbling in her notebook. “I didn’t even say anything.”

This is, quite obviously, not the case. Logan, who had been turned in the opposite direction, hadn’t been able to see her mouth. Scott forgets, sometimes, how good his hearing is.

“Don’t matter,” Logan snaps. Scott finds the choice of words completely baffling. She had spoken. Logan is angry because he had heard her. If Scott were in Logan’s position, he would have chosen that hill to die on long before the one that Logan chooses. “Apologize.”

Kitty glares sideways at him out of the corner of her eye. Piotr is frozen, discomfort painted clearly across his face. Jean’s shoulders are rigid, her grip on Scott’s thigh verging on painful. Helpless frustration rolls over Scott. While everyone comes to his apparent defence, he has no earthly idea why any single person in the room is reacting the way that they are.

After a long silence, Logan barks, “Kitty.”

“Sorry,” she mutters.

Scott doesn’t understand why it took her so long. She hadn’t meant anything bad. Even when she had called Scott a fag. This is just a thing people say. It doesn’t really signify anything beyond embarrassment and humiliation.

The comment would have, perhaps, hurt Scott’s feelings if he really were gay. But he’s not. So the entire supposition is a non-sequitur.

Once again, everyone is staring at Scott. He does his best to act unbothered.

“Um, it’s fine.”

He supposes it’s not acting if he truly is unbothered. Perhaps the real issue is the lack of respect, which Scott admits he is less than enthused about. But the collective reaction of the room feels much too severe for that. Perhaps everyone is simply reacting to Jean’s reaction and not to Kitty’s words in their own right. This too, in turn, feels more than a little unfair to Scott.

Jean’s grip on his thigh only tightens. “Apology accepted.”

She smiles. Her rage spills into the physical realm, warming Scott’s skin.

“Sorry,” Kitty repeats. “Sorry.”

“Everyone is overreacting. I don’t see what the big deal is. I wouldn’t say that if he was actually gay.”

Kitty’s voice carries down the hallway, her voice raised. No one quiets her. It’s just past ten. Jean had been asleep for nearly four hours. Scott had attempted to turn in early with her, but had failed miserably. His thoughts had burbled about in his skull at irregular intervals, creating just enough disturbance to prevent his sleep. He had snuck away to his office and busied himself with a spreadsheet he had been working on.

Now, Scott hovers in the hallway. Clad in pajama pants and clutching an untoasted bagel, he struggles to explain away the rock in his throat.

He can make out Ororo’s voice but not the individual words. Scott wishes he could.

“Except that’s completely different. I didn’t choose to be a mutant!”

“Cool it, kid.”

Logan’s voice is quiet but clearly audible. Scott imagines him leaning in the open doorway of Ororo’s room, just down the corner.

“And why are you so mad?! You say it all the time. And you’ve said it about Professor Summers. I’ve heard you.”

A beat passes. “I’m special.”

Ororo doesn’t speak. Scott imagines her glaring wordlessly at Logan, arms crossed over her chest in perfect imitation of the disapproving mother. He’s fairly certain she had learned the pose from Jean.

“Shut up, Logan! If everyone else gets to say it, why don’t I? I swear, everyone here wants to make me more of a freak than I already am!”

Scott should leave. He should walk away. He is not meant to be privy to this conversation.

He stays firmly planted. Scott posits that he should also know what his team members think of him. This is likely the reason he feels compelled to stay.

Ororo finally speaks again, her tone curt. Scott cannot make out the words until she raises her voice in frustration. “And perhaps Professor Logan should strive to improve himself and set a good example for our students.”

A beat passes in silence.

“Yup,” Logan agrees. His lips pop around the final sound. “What she said.”

Something in Scott snaps and crumbles. He cuts back through the kitchen, dumping the bagel as he goes.

It isn’t for nearly another hour, filled only by thoughtless staring up at the ceiling above his bed, that Scott finally manages to identify the burning helplessness in his groin as emasculation.