The dream surfaced, deceptively calm, from the depths of night. He knew it would. Moving quietly, moving fast; with all the leashed majesty of a Nebraska thunderstorm.
Scott lay on his side, facing the wall, senses taut as she came from the darkness. The bed dipped. There was a faint rustling sound. Jean settled next to him. She brushed the hair back from his forehead before easing the covers down, baring his upper body to the moonlight.
The scent of her perfume curled in his lungs. Shadows wrapped around them both, drawing them close. Scott didn't need to look to know she was naked.
He rolled onto on his back, going completely still. Terrified that the slightest movement, a single gasp, would shatter the substance of it.
Her fingers traced his lips. She leaned forward. Their mouths touched, breath mingling in the silence. The kiss was slick, hard -- utterly thorough. A fusion of will as much as a meeting of flesh.
Scott sat up straight, drawing her into his lap. Her body shifted against his with a sinuous glide. The warmth of her skin was soothing against the chill air.
Jean slid her hands into his hair, thumbs brushing over his cheeks. She nipped gently at his lips, teasing him almost with the heated contrast of their proximity.
His breathing quickened as she paused again, mouth hovering a beat from his.
Her tongue traced the corner of his mouth. His eyes drifted shut. She tilted her head and Scott chased her lips -- a silent plea.
And then a cool fingertip skated along his temple, beneath one leg of his glasses. It hooked into the curve by the lens. She tugged gently.
Energy clawed at the backs of his eyes; a warning as familiar to him as breathing. Hot needles drawing blood -- thick, lethal -- spilling over everything he saw.
Scott moved like lightning, gripping her wrist. He felt the glasses jerk, dragging down the bridge of his nose. Just in time, he caught them. Held them tight, keeping them in place.
Safe, he told himself. Safe.
"Jean." He searched her face in the darkness, trying to understand.
Never, even in the wildest realms of his imagination, would he allow himself this fantasy.
Especially after Alkali.
He knew he hurt her there, before. While in Stryker's sway, he nearly destroyed them both.
And yet, even with that...
Jean has no fear.
Scott stared slack-jawed at the vision -- the woman -- before him.
Recognition poured through him. A deluge of wonder and awe and passion and something he had not yet dared to let himself feel.
Hope.
He could not speak.
She murmured his name before pressing her lips to his once more, coaxing them open. Their tongues twined in a wild dance of urgency and heat.
Heaven help him, he could feel the rush inside his head...the blissful texture of her thoughts...the sheer breadth of her regard for him. Everything. She let him see.
His dedication -- working with the kids, with the team, with her. His drive, his intensity. His selflessness, his need. His passions, his creativity -- even his secret weakness for loud music and high speed. All combined together to make him the most fascinating question she had ever tried to answer.
And he was hers. Only hers. The pride she felt in that distinction said more about who he was than could ever be expressed in words.
If Jean was his touchstone, then he was her hero.
This sad, beautiful, noble man whom Xavier rescued from the misery of a solitary existence had given himself over completely to her.
The idea thrilled her more than anything in the world.
A minute passed, then another, before Jean drew back, breathless.
"Do you trust me?" she asked softly, voice lilting inside his head.
In the gloom, her features were sharper somehow. Vulnerable. So exquisite he ached inside. He could not see her eyes and yet he sensed her clearly. She was looking at him, deep into his soul, gazing on those things that only she could understand.
He curved a hand around her neck, meeting her stare.
"Yes."
Once more, Jean touched his glasses. He felt the faintest pressure.
"Do you love me?" She spoke aloud, huskier now.
He swallowed hard, looking away.
"Do you?"
With a deep breath, Scott tipped his head back--
And let go.
"Yes."
He was still holding her upright. Jean moved deftly, bumping against him. It was like a dance, and he knew the steps. Scott shifted, rising up on his knees. She helped him drag off his shorts.
He traced the swell of her breasts, the length of her spine. She sucked in a breath as his hands closed over the curve of her backside. Scott lifted her, settling back on his heels. Jean was guiding him...
And then he felt the slick heat of her body embrace him, spinning his world out of control. Sinking into her this way was like finding heaven. Communion, completion -- a wonder he never believed would exist for him.
He arched his back, needing more. To go deeper. To lose himself. His pulse leapt at Jean's low, responsive moan; echoing in her voice and in his mind.
Her fingers laced with his. The weight of his glasses fell away.
Scott bit down on his lower lip. He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head.
Tears suddenly threatened. No good. He'd learned long ago that they did not put out the fire.
"Scott?" she murmured. She raised his hand, kissing his fingertips. Then, she tilted his face back to hers. "Open your eyes."
He gasped. "I can't."
I won't.
"You can."
Jean soothed his troubled brow, fingers drifting down to brush his lids, drawing away the tension.
"Don't be afraid."
Scott didn't want to do this; didn't dare take the chance. But there was something so...assured in the way she said the words.
He trusted her. He loved her.
He opened his eyes.
Jean was in his arms, smiling. A small smile, painted with the sapphire-blue tint of moonlight. Her gaze glittered green in the darkness. Shadows chased deep purple highlights from her hair.
The cool kaleidoscope of forgotten color danced in his vision. Like magic.
Unbelievable.
She caught the wetness beading his lashes with a sweep of her thumbs.
And Scott felt the incredible power of her teke flowing through them, steady, where her fingertips made contact with his skin.
The flare, she was holding it. She was holding it back.
The strength was there. A limitless kind of joy. Jean...and so much more. A celestial song. Something he had only recently begun to glimpse in her mind on those dark and frightening nights before she left him for good.
He shook with the realization that she had him now. All of him.
"How?" He thought, reeling inside. "Why?"
"Because." Jean's lips brushed his forehead, fingers clutching in the thick strands of his hair. "I wanted to see you."
She began to move, raising her hips, easing him almost all the way out. A brief pause, and then she slid back again, sighing softly. She pressed a hot kiss to the pulse at his throat.
The sensation was too intense to hold back and he thrust upward, catching her unawares. More than alert now, he was in thrall. Strung tight, eyes wide -- balanced along the ragged edge of mounting pressure and sensual fulfillment.
Finding and then matching her breathless rhythm, Scott began to scale the peak with her at last.
In, and then out, faster, harder. Around him. Inside him. Oh God, she was everywhere. One with him the way that he needed so very badly.
When the end came, it came quickly. Her cry shattered the quiet. Jean slumped, trembling against him. She murmured incoherently in the curve of his neck.
Scott tensed. He wound her long legs around his waist and held her to him, rocked by the fierce power of her release. Through her, stunningly, he felt the formless echoes of his own desire, reflected back on him, intensifying.
Need coalesced inside his head -- her fire, his bliss -- narrowing the world to a single, hot flood of sensation that blinded him to everything but the sheer pleasure of it.
He followed her, driven over the brink by the achingly sweet despair of having everything he ever wanted right there in his arms -- and having none of it at all.
Panic seized him. Desperation etched its way through his soul at the knowledge that he would wake after all this, after finding her again. At the thought that this would all be gone in the blink of an eye.
"Scott..." she spoke softly, drawing him back from the void.
"Don't," he gasped, clinging to her. "Don't leave me here alone."
Her fingers traced the edge of his jaw one last time. Pain leveled him at the parting warmth of her kiss.
"Promise me you'll wait, Scott," she whispered. "Promise me you'll remember."
He tasted the bitter dregs of defeat. Sensed the mounting ache of emptiness; of inevitability. The storm he envisioned was upon him at last -- a nightmare of cold black spaces that slipped through his fingers like rain.
"Scott?"
Her voice, raw with emotion, a last flutter of hope, rising from the ashes--
"I...promise."
Scott wakes with a gasp, dazed and confused, into the icy-cold expanse of night.
With a low groan, he turns to his side. He blinks, drawing his knees to his chest, curling in on himself tightly. The harsh metal frame of his glasses digs into his brow.
He ignores it.
Instead, he concentrates on the one bright vision.
Jean.
If he closes his eyes, he can still feel her there, asleep in his arms, blissfully content. He can smell the scent of citrus in her hair; taste the bittersweet tang of her skin. Her thoughts -- the essence of her -- linger like a fading piano chord inside his head.
He remembers everything. All of it. Right down to the silky wetness of their mingled climax, soaking into the tangled sheets beneath him.
Scott sits up abruptly, legs bent, forearms resting on his knees. He buries his face in his hands.
The Professor talked of her making a choice once. Logan did too.
That seems to be what she offers him now:
Remember this. Remember her. Always. Or sink back into the web of denial he has spun so carefully for himself over the past ten days.
Faced with that alternative, he knows there is no real decision to be made.
If dreams are all he has left, he will not run from them any longer.
He will not run from her.
Scott falls back to the bed, adrift in the solitary chaos of his mind.
remember
He does.
And waits, fully awake, for the watery light of a new day.
-fin
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