Scott would never tell anyone that he keeps track, but this is the thirty-seventh time. He doesn't think he'll ever get tired of it, though; he can imagine doing this the three-thousand-and-thirty-seventh time and still being awestruck when he slides inside her, tucking his face into her neck and wondering how such red hair can smell so green, smell like the green inside of a twig. She's always a surprise, twisting or bucking, scratching or tickling, suddenly on top of him, sometimes laughing, head back and mouth wide. (The laughing he didn't get used to until around time sixteen. Not something he'd run across during sex before, and it took a while to decide it was a compliment.) So different from how she is outside the bedroom (their bedroom? is it theirs, now?) Outside she's controlled and calm, he can see her holding back her powers, but here she's—wild, happy, flamboyant. Chuckling and moving around him and nibbling his ear.
Although, free as she acts, she's controlling her powers even here. At least he hopes she is, Christ, otherwise she's laughing because she's thinking "He keeps i track /i ?!?"
Hank ought to be doing genetic research but instead he's downloading music. (Legally, mind you. Good example for the young ones and all.) He's just moved on to "White Christmas" to lead off his holiday mix after deciding that "Blue Christmas" is a little bit too..apropos, when one of said young ones wanders into the rec room. "Napster!" Hank says. "Bought and paid for!"
"Um, okay," the kid says. She cocks her head and her squiggly brown curls bounce, and Hank remembers her name: Oodles. Does she have oodles of powers, or was that because of her noodly hair? He flips through the student folders in his head, finds her color-coded for mild telekinesis and nothing else. (Strange, really; of course all the student files are on computer, but when he flips through them mentally they're in manila folders. And the hand flipping through them isn't blue, but never mind that.)
"How do you do that?" she says.
"Well, you have to set up an account first with a credit card, and then…"
"No, I mean, type with your feet."
There's a sudden eruption of laughter from a nearby afghan-heaped couch. Good Lord, he hadn't even realized Logan was under there.
"Oh. Yes. Well. Nimble toes, I guess," Hank says, and feet-fumbles around under the desk for his shoes. One advantage to the blue fur: blushes don't show.
Logan emerges from his pile of spreads, says, "Hiya, kid." The girl nods solemnly back at him; not scared of Wolverine, Hank notes, and mentally adds that to her folder.
"I like this song," she says. "I useta dream about snow, sometimes, but we never got it in Alabama. What do you dream about?"
Hank opens his mouth, and to his astonishment what comes out is, "Well, most recently I was fucking this girl I knew in high school. She was always very attractive but in this dream she had beagle ears, Lord knows why, possibly it was some reference to the asses' ears in "Midsummer Night's Dream" but more likely it was because we were doing it doggie style, and…"
Oodles' mouth is hanging open and so is Logan's, they make a funny picture really, and oh God he can't stop, he's piling detail on detail, stuff he didn't even i remember /i from the dream, position after position, creative use of kiwifruit slices, carpet burns and rope marks.
After a million-year-long minute or so Logan shuts his mouth with a snap, hops off the couch and chivvies Oodles out. She's still gaping. Hank hears, over his own still-going-oh-my-god monologue, Logan telling her that the fur professor is uh, sick right now, just go on back to your room, okay, and keep your mouth shut, yeah?
He comes back into the room, closes the door, stares at Hank. And Hank's mouth is still moving, he actually tries to shut it with his hand at one point but he just keeps yammering on until he's reached the final scene of the dream when he and the Beagle Girl ended up floating on an iceberg with Yukon Cornelious, and then he woke up.
His teeth click together and he's blessedly quiet.
"Question," Logan says.
"Yes?"
"The i fuck /i ?!"
"Haven't the foggiest."
"Are you, uh, stressed out or something?"
"I assure you, that wasn't me. I mean, it was me, and yes that was my dream, but I didn't in any wise mean to do that."
They turn and stare at the computer, the blue glow looking a bit ominous now.
"Could some supervillain, I don't know, send you a "Spew sex talk all over an eighth-grader" virus online?"
"Given the lunacy of the universe, that's entirely possible," Hank says, and starts sidling up to the computer, slowly. "You know what grade she's in?" he says. "Didn't you say you just thought of all of them as fresh meat for dodgeball?"
"I like i her /i ," Logan says. "She's not scared of me. And don't change the subject. Are you done saying embarrassing stuff?"
"I certainly hope so." Hank reaches the computer, starts to turn it off and at the last second tilts his finger so only the clawed nail is touching the button. He doesn't feel any weird "say embarrassing stuff" command go through him, but then he didn't last time either. Maybe he i is /i stressed out. Maybe he needs a vacation.
"Say something embarrassing," Logan says, staring at him.
"No."
"Tell me more about the Beagle Girl."
"NO."
Logan smiles suddenly, narrows his eyes. "What did you dream about before that?"
"Magneto's powers had expanded so that he now had dominion over bananas worldwide, and he was pelting us with them, and they were getting so deep some of the shorter students were suffocating in bananas—"
"You can't stop, can you?"
"And we couldn't stand upright because of all the slime, and we couldn't even i find /i Professor X and you said, "Tragically, he may have perished due to his height disadvantage under the banana onslaught," and Scott asked what happened to your vocabulary and you said it must be all the potassium—"
"You have to tell the whole damn thing, don't you?"
"And I told you both to stop squabbling and start eating, and—"
Scott's just finished, a long warm shiver and a sigh, when there's the worst noise at the door.
"Logan! Stop scratching, you asshole!" Jean yells, but she still looks blissed-out.
"Does he always scratch at your door?" Scott says, very casually.
"No," she says, "he's just being annoying because you're here."
"How—"
"He can smell you, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah. Can he smell—that we---"
"Don't go there," Jean says.
The terrible scratching noise again, and Logan yelling open up, and Hank yelling, no, DON'T. Jean scrambles into pajamas and opens the door.
"Hey!" Scott says, and pulls the covers up from belly to chin, and then decides that looks even goofier. He shoves them back to belly level and tries to look like he doesn't care.
"Oh, HELLO, Scott, what are YOU doing here?" Logan says, and sits on the
bed.
"You know, there i are /i chairs."
"Perfectly comfortable, thanks. You have i got /i to hear this, guys."
"You really don't," Hank says. He's still standing in the doorway.
Jean plops into an armchair, crosses her arms. "We really do," she says. She's looking at Logan hard, and when she says, "What, exactly, was important enough to interrupt our postcoital bliss?" Scott swears Logan flinches a little before he grins and says, "A demo, huh?"
"Dammit," Hank says, "you can just i explain /i it, you don't have to—"
"What'd you dream about before that?"
"I'd done something clever and Professor X said good boy, and he gave me a saucer of milk and I lapped it up with my tongue, and in the dream I i liked /i it, I was proud, Logan, you i bastard /i , you are an i utter bastard /i ."
"Oh," Logan says. "Shit. The other ones—the other ones were funny, guys, seriously. Shit. Sorry."
"What is going on?" Jean says, very calmly. But nobody answers—Hank and Logan are both glaring at the carpet; Scott's trying to think of something helpful to say but all he can think of is Hank. Lapping.
Jean sighs, looks at Hank, says, "Permission?"
"Why not?" he says.
Jean only has to rummage around in his head for a moment before she's got it figured out; there's a certain psychic residue, she tells Scott later, recognizably from someone untrained and unaware of what they're doing.
"Poor kid was horrified she'd done that," she says, snuggling up next to him. "It was one of those extra powers that come on at puberty sometimes, she had no idea." He's hoping she won't mention that he changed the sheets while she was gone. He'd kept telling himself that it would be stupid, but the idea of Logan walking by in the hall, sniffing, keeping track…
"Did you get her fixed up?"
"Yeah, helped her put up a temporary psychic wall so none of her questions turn into—a one-subject truth serum, again. Unless she wants them to. She could be really useful, once the professor helps her control it."
"Mmm-hmm," Scott says. He wonders if she'd want to go again. How many sets of sheets does she have?
"But wow, guy's dreams. I had to go back into Hank's to get that command out, and –just wow."
Scott tenses. i Danger, Will Robinson /i !
"Scott? What did you dream, last night?"
"That's really not fair."
"Hey, c'mon." She smiles at him, strokes his chest with her big warm hands in an even more unfair manner. "I never just look around, do I? It'd be nice for you to just tell me what's going on in there once in a while."
"That makes sense," he says. "And since I'm so careful about not immolating people, it would be fair for you to just set i yourself /i on fire, to amuse me. Once in a while." And aw, shit, her eyes go wide and blinky and her voice gets very, very even and calm.
"You're right," she says. "Shouldn't have asked. Overstepping."
"A threesome, all right?" he says. "Typical guy. Laugh it up," and to his relief she does, laughs for a long time, throws her arm across his chest and laughs into his neck.
"You are all hopeless horndogs," she says. She starts tickling his chest hair, and then his nipples, and he's entirely distracted by the time she says "I don't guess I get to ask which girl—" And because his defenses are down he tenses up all over at that, a dead giveaway. She doesn't even need psychic powers, he thinks grimly, because she stops tickling and says, "Oh my God, i Logan /i ?!?"
"Dreams have i nothing /i to do with actual waking—"
"I know that. Shhh. Don't worry about it," but there's a huge grin in her voice in the dark.
And later when she climbs onto him again, slides down on him warm and soft and muscled, she puts her lips to his ear and whispers, laughing, "Scott? Who was in the middle?"