Scott unzipped his jacket and shrugged it off hurriedly. "Take off your clothes and get on the bed"
Jean stared at him in shock. "W-What?"
"You heard me," he said in the same demanding voice as he peeled off his shirt in one fluid motion and took a step towards her. Jean immediately took a step back into the wall she'd forgotten was behind her.
"H-Have you l-l-lost y-your mind-d?" she managed through blue lips, clutching her bundled ski jacket closer to her.
"Jean, the cold water's gone to your head," Scott said as he took his next step, a more careful one, towards her with his arms slightly outstretched. "If you and that kid don't warm up fast, you'll die of hypothermia"
Jean continued to stare, her numb mind trying to find meaning in his words as the infant against her chest continued to cry from the cold. His sculpted silhouette against the moon-lit sky was all she could see and her mind couldn't figure out what he was asking when her eyes were glued to him. Scott took an even slower step and held his arms out for the child.
"You're both going to freeze if you don't get out of those clothes," he repeated with more emphasis in his voice which shook Jean a little bit more out of her stupor. "I'll take care of the kid if you strip and get under the sheets while I'm gone"
He placed his hands gingerly on her shoulders—gentle hands that Jean finally realized were hands she knew even against her icy flesh. Her posture slackened and she didn't clutch to the baby anymore but let her arms loosen so Scott could pull it out of her grasp.
"Change," he whispered and disappeared into the cabin's miniscule bathroom in a flash.
The instant the child was out of her arms and the freezing wind from the outside brushed in through the cracks in the door, Jean realized exactly how cold she really was. Still in her ice-water induced stupor, she attempted to take off her shirt with numb fingers but unable to do the buttons, switched instead to her corduroy pants, trembling the entire time.
She managed to undo the corduroy pants but stumbled in taking them off. Suddenly, there was another pair of hands from behind her helping her remove the pants and pull off the shirt without bothering with the buttons. Just as quickly she felt her bra strap undone and an impossibly warm woolen something thrown over her head. Realizing what was next, she managed to hook her thumbs in her panties and slide them off only to be immediately handed a pair of boxer briefs which she managed to slide back up without much difficulty. In the back of her mind, she knew if her body could afford to spare the heat, she would be blushing.
Scott led her hugging herself to the low-lying bed closest to the fireplace. Next thing she knew, Scott was hugging her freezing form to him as a crying bundle of sheets was pressed between their chests. Jean snaked her arms around the baby as Scott snuck his around her, resting one hand on the skin of her lower back. He pulled her as close to him as was comfortable for the baby.
She pressed the baby's ear to her chest, having read somewhere that the sound of a heartbeat was supposed to comfort them and focusing any mental energy she had that wasn't focused on preserving heat, Jean ever so gently pushed herself into the baby's mind. Not knowing what she might find in the mind of an infant, and deathly afraid to do anything that might hurt her, Jean merely 'sat' in the baby's mind in hopes that her presence would be enough to quiet her down. Mercifully, it was. The baby stopped crying and, still shivering, drifted off to sleep almost instantly.
For the longest time, Jean could only guess how long, she continued to shiver and listen to Scott's and the infant's low breathing, having taken the blunt of wind and rain. But as the shivering slowed down and she realized more and more exactly how warm Scott was, she began to try and talk.
"Nice cabin," she complimented without stuttering.
Scott sighed. Jean knew him well enough without her telepathy to know exactly what was about to come out of his mouth word for word.
"Do you want to tell me what you were doing showing up at my old cabin in the middle of the night, freezing cold, and dripping wet with a baby in your arms on Christmas Eve?"
"Is that rhetorical?" she asked sheepishly.
"Jean…"
"I couldn't just leave her where I found her," she whispered though the baby was fast asleep. "She would have died!"
In the small silence that followed, Jean realized exactly how hard the freezing snow/rain was hitting the window. She'd been out there for half an hour trying to find Scott's cabin in the woods. All her mental energy had been centered on trying to focus her telepathy enough to find Scott. Hence no telekinetic umbrella.
"You 'found' her?" Scott asked finally with a tone of voice Jean couldn't place.
"I heard her as I was driving up here," she explained. "No words, just a want and a need that almost drove me off the road." Jean paused as she became aware the she might be holding the baby too tightly and released some pressure. "She was under a cardboard box beneath a tree"
Scott's voice was harder when he spoke again. "Who would do that? Even if it was a mutant, who would be that kind of a monster?"
"You saw then, huh?" Jean asked.
At the same time, the two of them looked down at the infant between them. Probably no more than a few months old, the little girl had ashen gray hair and skin, two rows of fleshy spines running down her back and slits for gills on either side of her backbone.
Jean ran her thumb over two of the spines that where peeking out from the layers of blankets at the base of the baby's neck, musing on what they might be made of. Just then, the cabin groaned from the blast of icy wind that hit it, escaping under the crack of the door, sweeping among three of them and causing the fire to flicker.
They both responded at the same time by shivering and pressing themselves closer together. It was with this movement that Jean first became aware that she'd instinctively tangled her legs with Scott's to get closer to him. It felt natural, comforting. But it was also at this time that she felt his pelvis against hers. She took note of the fact that she was far warmer from the waist down than she was from the waist up.
She blushed and glanced up at Scott discretely to see if he'd noticed. By the color of his face, he most definitely had.
He didn't request her to move though and only shifted a little bit in embarrassment. Looking away, he changed the subject with, "So what are we going to do with her come morning?"
"I…" Jean thought as she gazed at the baby, "I…don't know, exactly." She glanced up at him again. "I thought maybe you'd know what to do"
He was silent for a few moments. Scott breathed in as the baby breathed out; she heard her own heart in her ears and the fireplace crackled at her back in symphony with the tempest outside. His legs were luxuriously warm.
Then an image from Scott's childhood flashed before her eyes, surprising her out of her drift to sleep: a scared little boy hiding in the closet to cry, his absence unnoticed in the inhumanely overcrowded orphanage.
"I can't think of a single orphanage who would take in such an un-adoptable," he thought aloud. Disgust licked the edges of his voice.
"That's what they called you?" Jean asked him, her voice barely audible. Scott ran his thumb up and down over the skin of her lower back under the fluffy sweater he'd given her and answered in a faraway voice, "'Handicapped' was actually the term they used. Same thing"
So an orphanage was definitely out of the question. But Jean was too tired by now to think anymore of any other alternatives to their present predicament. The exhaustion of her loaded night had her drifting off to sleep to sound of the slightly-more-than-just-a-snow-shower raging outside in the warmth of her slightly-more-than-just-a-friend's embrace. Across the baby girl's head, she pressed her face to Scott's throat and flexed the tangle of their legs.
Her lips were still icy. Scott flinched slightly at the unexpected temperature of the contact but then Jean felt the heat flush his throat and face. She closed her eyes and smiled sleepily, adjusting the infant in her arms.
"You should, um, try to get some sleep," he told her self-consciously, as he did his own adjusting with the sleepy red head in his arms. He swallowed audibly and felt the motion of his Adam's apple along the side of her nose.
"Can't argue with hmmm flawless logic," Jean mumbled, pressing her lips to Scott's throat, "G'nite, Slim"
She felt more than heard the soft chuckle in his throat as he pressed his own lips to her hair, "Good night, Red. Merry Christmas"
Jean slightly squeezed the baby, already nodding off, "G'nite, Annabel"
Scott's voice brought her back for a moment. "You named her? Annabel?"
Barely coherent, she replied something about a Christmas movie before her breathing became as even as the baby's. Scott rested his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes, laughing once over the wind's now softening howl. "I was thinking the same thing"
"Meeerry Christmas, Scottie!" Alex called as he approached the cabin with his arms full of grocery bags, knowing Scott could hear him through the wooden logs of the cabin. "That freaky rainstorm caught me out there last night and Anne wouldn't let me walk back to you. Can you believe her? She totally made me spend the—"
By this time, Alex had opened the door and was stepping into the cabin when he stopped short at the sight of a shirtless Scott in bed on the hearth with Jean who was in Scott's clothing. The two had just awoken and they released each other immediately. Both sat up blushing.
"Sooo," Alex said, trying not to smile, "exchanging Christmas presents?"
Just then, Annabel decided that she'd had enough sleep and made her presence known with a loud wail. Jean flipped back the covers and immediately picked her up and began to bounce her lightly as Scott got out of bed to grab another blanket. Alex's cocky attitude faltered for a moment as he looked from the baby to Scott to Jean and then back to the baby.
"Um…isn't that supposed to take nine months?"
Scott threw his brother a glare as he crossed the room that was completely lost due to the sleeping goggles he still wore. "You're hysterical, Alex"
"Hey, it's a logical assumption," the younger Summers said matter-of-factly as he put their groceries down next to the door and Scott got the blanket, heading back towards Jean and the crying infant. "It only takes one time, right Scottie?" Alex added teasingly, glancing over his shoulder at them to see his brother's reaction.
But Scott hadn't heard him. He held the blanket out in front of him for Jean to step into it, and he encircled them both in the warm material, the infant once again in between them. Alex straightened up and was about to say something in mock indignation when, suddenly, an image flashed in his mind's eye.
It was years into the future. Another Christmas, and Jean and Scott still stood by the fireplace of the same, only more decorated, cabin. Older but remarkably the same, Jean bounced another baby girl in her arms, laughing, as Scott embraced them both. The baby's locks were as scarlet as Jean's own hair in the glow of the fireplace.
"You say something, Alex?"
As his present reality rushed back on him, Alex shook the image out of his mind, surprised at the clarity of his imagination. Picking up where he left off, he shrugged and replied, "Nothing, bro. Just that Jean better have not brought me an equally awkward present too"
"I simply must go - Baby, it's cold outside
The answer is no - Ooh darling, it's cold outside
This welcome has been - I'm lucky that you dropped in
So nice and warm - Look out the window at that storm…
There's bound to be talk tomorrow - Think of my life long sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied - If you caught pneumonia and died
I really can't stay - Get over that hold out
Ahh, but it's cold outside
"Baby, It's Cold Outside" -Frank Loesser
Disclaimer: Making Scott blush is my sole purpose to living. Whether he belongs to me or not.
A/N: My fics are incredibly seasonally ill-timed. Ran across the start of this story in an old floppy disk and decided to flesh it out and post 3 months post-Christmas. It should always be the season of giving :)
A/N 2: Surprisingly, I never intended to carry on anything with Annabel (named after the Christmas cartoon movie, "Annabel's Wish") beyond this story but I've grown somewhat attached to her. Perfectly aware of the general sentiments to OCs, I'd like to know if you'd read more on Annabel as maybe the token Evo mansion baby if I decided to write it.
A/N 3: No particular setting in Evo-verse. We are to assume its around a time where Scott and Jean realize they have feelings for each other beyond best friends but neither can do anything about it. And no denying this fic was inspired by Minisinoo's "Five Pounds"
A/N 4: I apologize for crushing anyone's hopes and dreams with that beautiful first line. But not really ^.__.^