Note: Post-Phoenix Endsong where Jean's alive and well. As usual I won't delve into how Jean got back. She just is. Convenient eh?
R.E.M.
-sherridin-
It was the most pleasant sleep she had in months. Jean stretched against the cool satin sheets. With her eyes closed, she wriggled sideways until her body touched another. She sighed deeply as the man beside her pulled her close.
"Can we just call in sick for once," she murmured groggily.
"Sure," he replied.
Jean laughed. "Going soft, Mr. Summers?"
Scott managed a quiet smile. He played with her hair, running his rough fingers through the silky strands. The sensation made him slightly wistful for some reason he can't explain.
"What do you think? Play hooky?" Jean asked again.
"How can I disagree when my wife wants to skip work to have wild passionate sex with me?"
She smirked. "Bet you'd love that."
In response, Scott ran his fingers along her spine.
Jean's eyes fluttered open. He knew just about all the right places.
Jean propped herself up on her elbows to see his face.
"Two can play the game," she delivered coyly with the right degree of poutiness in the lips.
Scott's eyes slightly widened as his wife threw him a sultry look.
Jean was about to lean in, but then she withdrew suddenly and sat up straight.
Scott groaned. "What?"
Jean pushed her unruly red hair over her shoulder. "I forgot, I promised to meet Patty's parents this morning."
"Patty?"
"A runaway Kurt saved from a bunch of thugs at LA."
Jean lowered her feet to the floor. "She wants me to explain to her parents about mutants. Thinks her mom would disown her if she knew her secret. Poor kid. She's deathly afraid."
Jean was about to stand up when Scott suddenly felt an urgent need to touch her.
He grabbed her arm. "How about this poor little boy?"
Jean rolled her eyes and resisted his tug. "I have to get ready in-" she glanced at the clock on the side table, "27 minutes."
"You can get dressed in 5," he argued. "Stay," he asked her with a touch of desperation.
Jean gave him an odd look. "Fine, but just because you're weird all the sudden. And because I like it that you're finding me irresistible," she said, grinning.
With her lying beside him, Scott played with her hair once more.
"By the way, we have to go to Alaska this weekend," she said, her voice muffled at his chest. "Your grandpa called. Apparently our place got hit by a snow storm and a side of the house is caving in."
"Yeah, we'll do that," he said distractedly, his fingers continuously stroking her hair.
"And we have to go to Sara's too. She wants to arrange a surprise fiftieth anniversary for mom and dad."
"Yeah."
Jean can feel him being preoccupied but didn't say anything about it. Most often than not, Scott's always like that.
She wondered why he wanted her to stay when he'll just ignore her. But she's gotten used to this mood of his from all the years they've been married.
Fifty years. The thought popped out. Her parents had been married happily for fifty years.
She wondered if she and Scott would last that long. Jean frowned at her thoughts. Of course they will. They're so happy together.
Happy, she repeated, but the word suddenly feels ill fitted to describe them. An empty word. A lie.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. What's wrong with her? They're happy aren't they? Of course they are. Look at them right now.
But something tells her otherwise. This doesn't feel right. Her heart ached.
As always, reality kicks in. And then she knew.
She clung to him desperately. She wanted him to be real so badly.
When Scott felt her tightening grip, he knew it was about to be over.
"There's no runaway named Patty," she said softly.
Silence met her.
"And Sara's dead," she choked. "So are my parents."
Her eyes stung. She was waking up.
She began to fade in front of Scott's eyes that he shouted. "Wait! Don't go."
"I'm making you up…again," she replied in an even softer voice, speaking to herself.
"No, you're not! I think I'm dreaming too," he replied hoarsely.
"Sometimes even I get fooled by my own telepathy." She smiled bitterly as she shook her head. "I swear it's taking a life of its own."
"No, this is my dream too. Both of us are here," Scott argued stubbornly. "We're sharing this dream."
"I'm even arguing with my own projection." Jean muttered in disdain.
"No, listen, Jean, maybe our rapport is acting up."
Jean stopped in her tracks.
"We've done this before – years ago when we're together. Remember?" Scott didn't know why he's so sure but he is. "It only happened a couple of times. Once, I was in Tibet for a mission and you were at the—"
"…New Mexico safe house," she finished, a bit surprised.
Then she shook her head. "But our rapport was severed over a year ago."
"Some things just keep coming back," he stated plainly.
His choice of words silenced her.
"I thought it was only my dream at first but it felt too real." Scott added, "And I never have happy dreams anymore."
"This is happy?"
"Yeah… I missed you. I never get to talk to you anymore."
"What do you expect?" she retorted bitterly.
Scott sighed. "Look, we're sharing a good moment right now. Let's not ruin it."
"So it's all buddy-buddy-let's-sleep-together in our dreams but we'll ignore each other when we're awake?"
"You're the one ignoring me."
"Well, what do you want me to do, Scott?" Jean demanded.
"I don't know…We can try patching things up…be friends." As the words came out from his mouth, even Scott knew he's only kidding himself.
Too much damage has been done to have things return to normal – his merge with Apocalypse, her many deaths, Emma…
Jean gave a weary laugh. "Friends? Honestly Scott…"
He shrugged.
Jean sighed as she sat at the end of the bed. "Fine, let's not talk about this in here. Sleeping is supposed to be relaxing. I don't want to wake up with a splitting headache."
Both fell into silence.
"Remember the last time we shared a dream?" he asked.
"No."
"In the dream, I was robbing a bank for some weird reason. And then you showed up to stop me." Scott's lips grew into a smile. "You easily realized we're sharing that dream because you couldn't catch me and in your dreams you can usually control the events."
Jean remained passive.
"Anyway, I got the money from the vault but cops showed up who transformed into –"
"Clowns," Jean finished. The corners of her mouth turned upward. "They were clown cops with the red noses and big shoes."
Scott laughed. "And they were driving a Volkswagen like in those old movies. And it flies up and we couldn't outrun them."
"And then giant broccolis appeared!" she exclaimed at her recollection.
"Yep, broccolis controlled by Unus – "
"Unus The Untouchable. Of course how can I forget him."
Jean's shoulders shook from laughter. "It was funny and freaky at the same time. It was one of the strangest dreams I had."
"Mine too. It was probably because both of our subconscious can't agree with each other. Mine wanted to go in one direction and yours wanted to go off in another. They're very unruly."
Jean studied Scott intently. "Then why is this dream, right now, so normal?"
"This?" Scott gestured to himself half naked and at her wearing a sexy negligee. "Normal?"
Jean rolled her eyes. "Yes I'm aware this is a scene not likely to ever happen. But how come we're so grounded in reality? A couple in bed – waking up together…"
"Well, the subconscious is supposed to address the deepest desires of a person."
"Don't even go there."
"I'm not. I'm just stating facts."
"When did you realize that this was just a dream anyway?" Jean asked. "You realized it much earlier than I did."
"I just knew," he answered simply.
"How? There must have been a sign, something to point you to realization."
Jean noticed the tiniest flinch of uneasiness in Scott's face.
"How?" she pressed.
Scott hesitated. "When…when I noticed that your hair is red."
Jean hated him at that moment. "Of course, you've grown accustomed to blonde."
Scott said nothing.
"This is pointless. Let's just end the dream," she said coldly.
Scott made a last attempt to hold her arm, but his hands grasped only thin air.
Scott looked on helplessly at her fading image. "It is what it is and I'm sorry for that."
Jean looked at him, weary and wistful. "I know. So am I."
Jean dissolved into nothingness, leaving Scott alone in his dream.
Jean woke up, her heart pounding hard against her chest. She glanced at the clockon her nightstand. 2:45
Was it really a dream they both shared, she wondered. It just seemed so surreal.
Twisting and turning for the rest of the night, Jean finally gave up sleep just as the first rays of the sun started to soften the dark sky.
She went to the kitchen to get a drink, but then found the person she wanted to avoid already sipping a mug of coffee.
Startled, Jean gave Scott a scrutinizing look, wondering if the dream really happened between them.
"Can't sleep?"
"I had a nightmare," she replied impassively.
"I had a pretty nice dream."
Scott gave a smile that was clearly asking for a truce.
Jean pursed her lips. "So it was real, huh?"
"I guess."
"We should learn to keep our minds to ourselves when we sleep," she said pointedly.
"You make it sound like I'm the one who invaded your dream."
"Well maybe your blonde girlfriend rubbed off on you. I heard she's good at slipping into other people's consciousness," she snapped.
Scott squared his jaw. "Jean, I don't want to fight."
But the redhead's temper wasn't letting up. "When you woke up next to her, did she learn about this midnight rendezvous of ours?"
The normally stoic Scott looked pained. "Let's leave Emma out of this."
Jean started to say something but Scott interjected, "Please Jean?"
His pleading request sounded like an apology. And she didn't want that. What happened between them was nobody's fault.
Jean exhaled. "I'll just build stronger psychic blocks in my sleep so that this won't happen again."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"Coffee?" he offered awkwardly.
She silently fixed herself a cup and sat opposite Scott. "So… um, I can't believe you remembered the dream about the clowns."
"As I recall you were terrified of them."
"As a kid, yeah. I mean, white make-up, dark eyes, and a plastered smile? Who isn't?"
Jean fidgeted with her mug. "Dreams are overrated anyways. People think it's a reflection of the unconscious or a message from a higher being. But really they're just memories randomly pulled out of our brains and then pieced together."
"Do you really believe that?"
"Yeah. As far as normal dreams go."
"I don't think this one counts as normal."
Scott hesitated. "Jean, what I said about being friends - it sound ridiculous, but I really meant that."
"Fine. I'm getting tired of ignoring you anyway." She paused. "It's just... it'll be difficult pretending that everything's fine between us."
"We don't have to pretend."
She gave a hallow laugh. "And open the floodgates of unresolved issues hell? For our own sakes, Scott, I think it's better to keep a certain amount of pretense."
"I guess." He managed a faint smile. "It's funny. Since you came back, we've talked more in that dream than when we're awake."
"Well it is a dream. It's where the most unlikely happens, where nothing makes sense."
"Sometimes they do."
Scott can feel Jean's unease. "So about Unus and the broccolis. That was crazy huh?"
Jean looked at him gratefully. "Bizarre," she agreed.
Reviews please! It's been a while since my last fic, so forgive the kinks.