Warning: This chapter is most assuredly adult -- graphic sexual content.

Scott didn't ask Jean out immediately.  She supposed she should have expected as much after his counting coup in the garage, but she became frustrated.  And then she became irritated.  And then she became downright depressed.  

And then she became amused at herself.  

His hesitation wasn't due entirely to revenge.  He wasn't above a bit of tit-for-tat -- he was only human -- but for all his occasional exuberance, he was still a cautious man, and he'd asked her out five times already . . . six, if one counted hitting her car and then wheedling a date that wasn't a date.  The real reason Scott bided his time was that he wanted to be sure she was saying yes because she meant it -- no regrets, no second thoughts.  

So on Thursday night when they returned to the mansion, they behaved as if the events in Manhattan hadn't occurred; he didn't try to take her hand when they walked back into the mansion, nor did she try to take his.  But they stayed up late, watching movies with the kids and sitting together on the couch, him with an arm along the couch back behind her.  Sometimes, unobtrusively, he let the edge of his thumb stroke her shoulder or the skin of her neck.  Sometimes, unobtrusively, she rested her hand on his knee.  Every touch, no matter how trivial or brief, was electric.  

Friday, she was busy all day and into the night, and Saturday, Scott was out of commission with one of his migraines.  Jean thought the stress of everything probably had as much to do with it as built-up energy, and she went by his room several times to bring him Imitrex or just to sit and pat his arm.  They didn't talk, even telepathically, except once when he whispered, "You don't have to stay here.  You must feel it."

"I choose to," she'd replied -- to both things.  He'd fearlessly walked in to share her insanity.  She chose now to share his pain.  

So Saturday passed as well, bringing them around to Sunday -- the day on which he'd always asked her out before.  He got up late and she was at the hospital most of the day, not arriving home until time for supper.  Scott was already in the dining hall, sitting with the others at what had come to be dubbed "the teachers' table."  Even in a room full of people, her eyes naturally fastened on him, and she was old enough to be embarrassed by her own fixation.  Feigning nonchalance, she slipped into the kitchen to pick up a dinner plate from Valeria, the cook.  She knew Scott was watching her, and she knew it the minute he rose to come after her.  She emerged back into the dining hall with a plate full of pesto chicken and a bowl of antipasto just as he caught up to her . . . 

. . . only to drop to his knees in front of her and stretch out a dramatic hand.  What on earth? she wondered.  

Whenever I see your smiling face
I have to smile myself
Because I love you --
yes, I do .  .  .

And when you give me that pretty little pout
It turns me inside out.
There's just something about you, baby,
I don't know . . .
Isn't it amazing a man like me
Can feel this way? 
Tell me how much longer,
If it grows stronger every day?  
Oh, how much longer?

Scott ignored him, continuing to sing with absolute sincerity (and a really enviable ability to stay in tune).  Jean would have put a hand over her face to hide her flaming skin, but as she gripped a plate in one hand and her bowl in the other, such a gesture would have dumped her dinner down her front, and that would have been even less dignified.  

I thought I was in love
A couple of times before
With the girl next door,
But that was long before I met you.
Now I'm sure that I won't forget you.
And I thank my lucky stars
That you are who you are,
And not just another lovely lady
Sent down to break my heart.

And wasn't it time she quit paying attention to what everyone else thought, instead of what she felt?  No, maybe Xavier didn't approve, and she knew her mother wouldn't, but she wasn't a little girl anymore.  She had to make her own way, make her own decisions, fall in love and make her own mistakes.  Otherwise, the victories weren't hers, either.  People were so much more than the outward shell, birth dates and eye color and height -- and didn't she know that intimately?  Didn't she know him intimately even though she'd never seen his body unclothed or his naked face?  He'd bared his heart, and his mind, which was a lot more revealing.  He was her friend, her companion, her conscience, and -- just maybe -- her fate.  

Isn't it amazing a man like me
Can feel this way? 
Tell me how much longer,
I can grow stronger every day.
How much longer .  .  .

And although he wore a shit-eating grin wide enough to split his face, she couldn't hear a word he said in reply because there was too much yelling and clapping in the dining hall.  It reverberated off the wood paneling.
 
 
 

"So -- you mad at me?"

He'd caught her a few hours later in the upstairs hallway as she was coming out of her room after an evening shower.  Crossing her arms, she tried to glare and purse her lips, but it was mostly to keep herself from smiling.  "You made a spectacle of us."  

He didn't appear apologetic, just shrugged a bit.  And in truth, she wasn't mad.  Embarrassed, yes, but not angry.  Scott was full of surprises, persistent, and unwilling to surrender.  And cocky.  He'd do whatever it took.  That dogged perseverance was, in fact, part of what attracted her to him.  "You'd better take me somewhere nice," she warned him.  

"Oh, I will."  He shot her that smile again.  "When do you want to go?"

"I thought the guy was supposed to make the arrangements?"  She asked it coyly and leaned back against the wall.  

"Oh, come on!  You're in residency.  It's more like when you've got a free night.  I don't care if it's on a Tuesday!"

She laughed.  "I was just teasing.  And actually, it's on Thursday.  Again.  I work all next weekend.  Is Thursday okay?"

"Thursday it is."  

They didn't say anything else then.  Still embarrassed, she stared at a display table in the hall behind him; it sported a brass vase filled with pussy willows and wilting tiger lilies.  He put his hands in his pockets and examined the interlacing pattern in the oriental runner beneath his feet.  "You want to take a walk?"

She glanced back at him.  "Where to?"

"I don't care -- just get out of the house."  

"You mean go outside?  It's chilly after dark, Scott, and my hair's wet.  May in New York isn't May in Berkeley."  

Instantly, his face fell into lines of apprehension and the soft light of hallway lamps threw his shadow indistinct on the wall behind.  His uncertainty made her smile -- one minute, he was her troubadour, and the next, a shy young man.  "Can you wait while I go get a sweater?"

His smile came back, but softer.  He wasn't trying so hard.  "Sure."  

A few minutes later, they slipped out of the house to meander along the mansion's sidewalks.  She'd wrapped herself in an oversized dark green sweater with a cowl neck, and he put an arm around her shoulders, ostensibly to keep her warm.  They talked about the newest student, who'd arrived just the week before -- Doug Ramsey, whose mutant gift was the mathematical ability to decode any kind of pattern, whether in math, language, computer programming, or puzzles.  He came very close to being a living computer.  Scott's mutant gift granted him some natural pattern recognition, but:  "Doug leaves me in the dust.  I don't know that there's anything much I can teach him, Jean.  I just give him stuff and he figures it out for himself.  It's like having Benoit Mandelbrot or Hermann Weyl in your class."  

"Is he doing college level math already?"

"He's into the first sequence of calculus now.  At thirteen.  He thinks it's a game.  And he speaks sixteen languages . . . so far.  Fluently.  That doesn't count the computer languages or ASL.  And he asked the professor if he could start Sanskrit, for God's sake.  He said, 'It might actually be a challenge.' What the hell are we going to do with this kid?  Normally, we have to worry about catching them up.  In Doug's case, we have to worry about keeping up!  Even Hank has his hands full."  

"He still has to learn social skills, Scott.  There's more to high school than classes."  Her expression was rueful.  "I should know.  And Hank, too.  Maybe you should try talking to his mom.  She found things to keep Hank busy."  

It wasn't, Scott thought, a bad idea.  If anyone knew how to raise a genius as a thoroughly decent human being, it was Edna McCoy.  

Some distance from the mansion, they stopped by silent agreement under a maple tree.  She turned to face him and without debate, without agonizing, raised both her hands to cup his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks just below the glasses.  They bent towards one another at the same moment, lips met, opened, eased into the quickness of tongues behind.  This wasn't stolen, or orchestrated.  They kissed like old lovers, easily, and like new ones, passionately.  After a minute, he wrapped her up in his arms and held her tight.  His body flashed hot all over and he wanted to feel her against him, wanted to peel her back and climb inside.  Without thinking, he pushed her up against the maple trunk until the bark rubbed rough on her sweater and caught in her hair.  She ignored it, hooking one of her legs around his hip to pull his groin to hers even as she felt out the contours of his mind as easily as she did his body.  Fierce, she dragged blunt nails down his thin shirt and pulled him into her thoughts, and this time, he didn't resist being swallowed.  His own hands moved up and down her sides from the swell of her hips to the smaller swell of her breasts, and when he pressed thumbs over her nipples she bit his lower lip, tasting blood.  His erection was hard like wood, and warm against her lower belly.  He was panting, drunk on her touch and the kiss he'd waited five years to get, and she'd stopped thinking of much beyond his neck and jawline and mouth, and cock.  She'd never felt this level of abandon with anyone, even Ted, and she might have blamed it on her telepathy but couldn't.  She knew she'd been waiting on Scott as much as he'd been waiting on her, even if she hadn't quite realized it, or been willing to admit it.  He was her ground of being.  

They spent some time necking under the maple tree, confident in the concealment of shadows and the hour, and unaware that they were being watched from a third story window by a man in a wheelchair.  It wasn't that Charles' Xavier's eyesight excelled, or that he was inclined to snoop, but their combined joy (among other things) was hard to miss psychically.  They flared as bright as Chinese fireworks in the twining of their minds and their lust.  He sighed.  They'd been headed in this direction ever since they'd joined in the Danger Room, or really, since sometime last fall.  It had been inevitable, like death and taxes, and he'd been steeling himself for it even while he'd tried to avert it.  But done was done, and he'd say no more.  They might be the children of his heart, but they were not children, however young they might seem to him.  

Sighing again, he set aside his book and wheeled himself downstairs to get tea, and when he ran into the two of them in the main hall later, sneaking back in the door like teenagers caught out past curfew -- hands joined, hair mussed and lips bruised -- Jean squeaked and Scott began stammering a very lame explanation.  

"Enough," he told them quietly.  "You know how I feel about this, but it is your choice to make.  I'm not going to punish you.  Come now, should I ground you both for a week?"  They managed to look as amused as they were sheepish.  He wheeled past, adding as he went, "Jean, you might want to find a high-necked blouse for tomorrow."
 
 
 

There were still moments when Jean wasn't sure if a memory belonged to her, or to someone else.  

She could vividly recall an afternoon in the kitchen when she'd lectured Valeria on how to make the perfect flan by placing eggshells in the boiling water outside the flan cup -- and all of the others had stared at her in shock, until Scott had said quietly, "Jean, you can't cook.  You burn water."  

But she knew how to cook -- now.  She knew how to do all kinds of things now.  Yet, she wondered, did she have a right to those memories when she hadn't lived them?  She might know how to make a perfect flan, but would she actually be able to do it?  The memory lived in her head, but not in her hands.  How much of knowledge was the purview of the intellect, and how much belonged to the existential?  When Scott had kissed her last night, had he kissed a sheltered young academic, or a cynical old New Orleans whore?  Or a hundred other people in between?  It troubled her, and all Monday morning, her concentration was off.  She'd been working with a patient suffering from insulin resistance, and another with chronic Hepatitis B.  She adored the problem-solving aspect of internal medicine, and so far, had excelled in this rotation.  But that morning, the chief resident called her aside to -- humorously -- dig through her hair.  "What are you doing!"  She'd jerked away.  "Looking for lice?"

He'd grinned.  "Looking for the blonde roots.  What's up with you today?"

Rolling her eyes, she said, defensively, "Nothing!  I'm just . . . a little off.  I'll be fine, Alan."  

He eyed her seriously.  "You okay?"

She knew to what he referred.  It seemed as if the entire hospital had heard about her breakdown in the ER in March.  "I'm fine.  It has nothing to do with that."  

"Then what is it?  You're out orbiting Mars today."  

"It's nothing."  

He snorted.  "In a pig's eye.  Well, get it together."  She nodded as he walked off, and took a deep breath, returning to her slides.  

Jean wasn't the only one unable to concentrate.  Scott made three mistakes in equations on the board and once, his train of thought completely derailed in the middle of a lecture.  The students laughed.  They, at least, had a slightly better idea of what had him so discombobulated.  "Where are you going to take her, Mr. Summers?" Jubilee asked boldly.  

"Where I'm taking Dr. Grey to dinner is my business.  Yours is pre-algebra homework."  It came out a bit more harshly than he'd meant it.  

"Don't tell me you're doing dinner and a movie?" Skids asked.  

"What's wrong with dinner and a movie?"

"That is, like, so lame!" Jubilee pronounced.  

Scott blew out lightly and rolled his eyes behind his glasses, reminding himself that they were teenagers, and if he weren't so much older than they, in that moment, he felt the difference keenly.  "Can we get back to math?"

What was wrong with dinner and a movie anyway, he wondered? 
 
 
 
 

Jean had shift until eleven, and was taking her dinner in the noisy cafeteria, so lost in thought that she didn't see Barb Clark approach her small table until the other woman actually sat down.  "Earth to Jean," Barb said, waving a hand in front of Jean's nose.  It made Jean start, then smile.  

When they were both on shift, they ate together, and sometimes they met for drinks afterwards if the day had been long, and Jean began to think that -- with remarkably little fanfare -- she'd finally found a friend of the same sex.  It was a new experience for her.  She'd always gotten along better with men and had thought the whole notion of 'sisterhood' rather 1970s, yet as much as she loved the men in her life, she also found interacting with them to be intimidating.  Men fascinated and frightened her both, and ever since her telepathy had returned, she'd become increasingly conscious of her own approach-and-repel attitude towards them.  

When she'd woken from her confusion, she'd been touched to learn that Barb had gone to the trouble to call the mansion, to ask after her, and Jean had called her back as soon as she'd been emotionally able.  Barb had been solicitous, too, ever since Jean's return to Columbia Presbyterian, in a way that was present, but not pushy.  They'd never discussed precisely what had happened, but Jean was unsure where to begin, or what Barb would think if she knew the truth.  "So what's up?" Barb asked now as she salted her corn.  For a physician who should know better, she had remarkably poor eating habits.  

"I have a date for Thursday night."  

Barb's eyebrows rose but her grin was honest.  "Mr. Cowboy Hat finally wore you down, eh?"

Laughing and self-conscious, Jean made a prevaricating gesture.  "He sang to me."  

"What?"  Barb dropped her fork and leaned across the table.  "Spill!"

So Jean told her what had happened on Sunday evening as Barb pressed for details, asking what she planned to wear and where he was taking her, and Jean was (embarrassingly) delighted to be engaged in the kind of social gossip she'd missed in high school.  "So when do I get to meet him?" Barb finished.  

Jean shrugged, suddenly unsure.  It wasn't that she doubted Barb's acceptance of Scott's age.  This time, it was Scott's more obvious mutancy she worried about.  The mutant issue was another thing they'd never discussed, although Barb knew it was the subject of Jean's research.  Neither had avoided it; it simply hadn't come up in a context beyond the casual academic reference:  "I'm working on a paper about . . ."  Jean had no real reason to think Barb would be biased, but no reason to think she wouldn't be, either, and for the first time, she fully understood Scott's reluctance, three years ago, to tell EJ the whole truth.  

"Come on," Barb said now.  "You've met Randy.  You can't keep yours hidden forever."  

"I'm not hiding him."  Jean gave a small, private smile.  It seemed to slip onto her face naturally of late, any time she spoke of him.  

"You are so smitten," Barb said, sipping coffee.  She seemed amused.
 
 
 

"So -- dinner and a movie?  Is that okay?"

Scott had still been up when she'd arrived home from the hospital after midnight, and now they were in the kitchen.  She made tea while he watched, leaning up against the fridge door, hands in his pockets, trying to seem casual but failing.  "Dinner and a movie is fine," she said.  "Do you want any tea?"

"No, thanks.  You're sure?"

She smiled at him sidewise.  "Yes, Scott.  Really.  It's fine.  You worry too much."  

He shrugged, and, reaching out, she slipped an arm through his until he relaxed finally, pulling her in to wrap her up, her back against his side and his face buried in her hair.  They stood that way, unspeaking, until the tea kettle sang.
 
 
 

This is a date, a real date, Scott Summers told himself as he tried to avoid cutting his chin with a razor.  He was going out with Jean Grey.  After five years of waiting, he was finally going out with Jean Grey.  

His hands shook and his brain occasionally detoured into a youthful Neverland of what he wished could be, and he wound up cutting himself three times anyway, each a bright sting of pain like a stainless steel admonishment.  Finally, he dropped the razor into the sudsy water with a plop, and leaned over to brace palms on cool porcelain.  "Get a grip, Summers."  

At ten to seven, he was pacing, all nervous, in the wood-paneled den:  over to the pool table, around the Ficus tree, across the Persian runner in front of the door, past the black leather couch, and back to the pool table.  Francesco Placido, who was inelegantly sprawled over a florid-red Queen Anne seat, quit reading to watch him.  "Chill out, Scott," he said.  

Scott paused, and smiled.  "I'm having déjà-vu."  Frank smiled back, and Scott walked over to plop down on the couch.  "Did you know?" he asked.  "Five years ago?"

Frank's eyebrows went up in a silent question.  

"When I took her to see Phantom, on Broadway, did you know then?"

Frank's confusion became amusement.  "There are many futures -- "

"Oh, cut the Twilight Zone lines, Frank.  Just answer the goddamn question."  

Frank laughed.  "Yes, I knew it was likely."  Then he dug in his back pocket for his wallet, pulled it free and fished inside, handing Scott a foil package.  "You did not take this last time."  

Grinning, Scott accepted, more to acknowledge the gesture than because he thought he was likely to need it.  

When Jean finally appeared, Scott met her in the doorway.  "Nice," she said, patting the lapel of his leather jacket.  "I hope I'm not under-dressed."  She indicated her black shirt and khaki pants.  "I figured, just for a movie -- "

"You're fine," he interrupted, kissing her cheek and wondering why she was worried.  Jean had a gift for making anything elegant.  "I like your hair, and" -- he touched one of the rhinestone hoops -- "when did you get your ears pierced?"

She pulled the earring off and held it up.  "Clips."  

"Oh."  And it struck him how very different this time was than five years ago when he'd been a stuttering wreck, almost afraid to touch her.  Now, they were discussing her fashion accessories.  "You look beautiful."  

"You're a flatterer," she replied, but blushed all the same, having spent an hour in the bathroom, and perhaps that was excessive when he'd seen her at her worst not long ago, but she'd wanted to be pretty for him tonight.  For all her fierce attachment to her adult independence, her childhood programming of pink ruffles, Mary Janes, and Barbie dolls left her wanting to be the envy of other women.  At least once in a while.  

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said, and with a hand at the small of her back, ushered her down the hall towards the garage.  

They took the Mercedes, because it was her favorite, and she drove, because he was pretending to be blind.  It was a subterfuge EJ had invented, back at Berkeley, to keep people from staring at the guy wearing shades in a dark movie theater.  Scott even had a red-tipped cane, and was good at the counterfeit after years of practice, but for dinner, he didn't use it.  They ate at The Auberge Maxime, the priciest place in their region of Westchester but worth it for the ambiance, like a Provençal cottage crossed with a fairy tale.  They meandered through extensive gardens while they waited for their table.  (Even with reservations, it took half an hour.) He got a kiss under the willow, and it was sweeter, he thought, than the scent of white moonflowers wrapped around garden trellises.  The maître 'd seated them outside on the terrace, and the waitress had to come back twice because they both kept forgetting to look at the menu, being so engrossed in looking at each other.  The second time, at the woman's rolled-eyes, Jean said, "I think we'd better pick something," and turned her attention to the faux-leather carte du jour.  

"Do you read French?" he asked.  

"A little."  

"Then you order, because I haven't got a fucking clue what half this stuff is."  

She laughed, but she ordered.  He got roast duck fillet with apples and Porto sauce.  "People eat this?" he asked.  "Quack, quack."  

"Philistine."  She kicked him under the table.  

It was, he admitted later, very good, and a little tipsy on the wine, they walked around the gardens again after eating and didn't seek the concealment of willow branches to exchange kisses.  "You taste like peppered duck," she told him, laughing.  He chased her out to the car, and she drove them to the White Plains Rose Theater.  Constructed in a 1920s art nouveau architectural style, it specialized these days in classics, and was open only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, catering to local film connoisseurs.  Scott had chosen it less for the film (Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter) and more for the fact that there wouldn't be much of a crowd on Thursday, and he could neck with Jean in a back row.  He was right about the lack of a crowd, but not about the necking.  

"I love Katharine Hepburn!" she said in delight, clapping her hands together when she discovered what film he'd chosen.  "How did you know?"

He hadn't, but he smiled enigmatically, and she made them sit near the front, not in back.  He had to watch the film because she wanted to.  She did, at least, let him put an arm around her, and rested her head on his shoulder.  

Jean had ulterior motives for dragging Scott to the front of the theater, and they didn't owe to Katharine Hepburn.  She knew very well what he wanted, could feel it in him, the press of desire.  It had been like this ever since Sunday night.  Whenever they were together, he became urgently physical, and if half of her reveled in it, the other half feared it.  Just like every other man she'd ever dated, Scott wanted sex, but she wasn't too sure what to think of that because, this time, she wanted it almost as much.  Her own lust scared her.  

Based on a play, the film was unusually long and midnight had passed by the time the theater emptied.  Jean was aware of second glances as she led her "blind" boyfriend through the antique lobby, his cane tap-tapping in front of them, but she sensed only curiosity in the minds around them, or mild pity.  

Scott, however, was pensive.  "What is it?" she asked as they exited out into the brisk night wind and the intermittent illumination of streetlights.  

"It wasn't much of a date movie, was it?"

She laughed at him.  "I didn't mind.  I told you, I love Katharine Hepburn and she won an Oscar for that performance."  

Scott didn't reply immediately and their steps slowed as they neared the little parking lot with its old, cracked blacktop.  He didn't forget and look down even once, though it meant he stumbled over pavement breaks.  People were still moving out of the theater, a soft shuffle of voices in half-heard conversations.  Finally, Scott said, "You know, I'm not sure if he hated her or loved her.  Henry, I mean."  

"I think he felt both.  That's the tragedy of it."  She was silent a moment, then went on, "I remember this pair of professors who taught at Bard with Dad.  The woman was on the history faculty, and her husband was in English, or philosophy, I don't remember now.  Anyway, they lived on the same street we did, and were married for a while, then got a divorce, but the weird thing was that he used to come over to the house all the time after.  He mowed her lawn.  They had a daughter, sure, but it was more than that.  I swear, they even still had sex.  I asked Dad about it once and he said, 'They love each other, they just can't live together.'" They were silent for five more steps.  "I think Henry and Eleanor were like that.  Love's a strange thing.  Sometimes people make their own arrangements, despite convention."  

Only belatedly did she realize how that had sounded, but thankfully, he didn't comment.  They'd reached the car and she turned to lean back against the passenger side so she could face him.  He continued to play blind, not looking directly at her as others climbed into cars and drove away, a hum of motors and flash of headlights.  "Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry Plantagenet met and fell in love when she was still married to her first husband," Jean said.  Daughter of a British history professor, she knew all her kings and queens.  "She was older than Henry by eleven years."  Her lips quirked up.  "She had quite the reputation, the Crusading Queen."  

"I kinda gathered that from the movie.  Did she really have an affair with Henry's father?"

"Who knows?  She certainly had an affair with Henry."  Jean laughed.  "She was four months pregnant when they married, and they were married only two months after her marriage to Louis was annulled.  Do the math.  Anyway, according to legend, she helped him to his throne and they loved each other madly -- and fought like cats and dogs.  She was very smart; that was part of the problem."  She looked off.  "Great kings look for equally great opponents, I think.  But Henry didn't have an equal, unless it was his own wife."  

"So he locked her up and had affairs with a string of pretty girls?"

"It was a different world, Scott.  Men didn't take kindly to smart women with minds of their own."  

He leaned into the car beside her, weight on his hip, facing her.  "I like smart women with minds of their own."  

She could feel the heat in her face.  "Do you?  Have men really changed?"

"I'd like to think so."  

"Then why were they never interested in me?"  It was said sharply, and she raised her eyes to meet his behind quartz.  He seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be blind.  "All they wanted was to get in my pants."  It was, almost, a challenge.  

"Then they were stupid."  

"You don't want to get in my pants?"  And that was a challenge.  

His smile was genuine, but also calculated to be charming.  "I want in your pants, but I also want in your head."  

"You know just what to say, don't you?"

"I'm not lying."  

And he wasn't.  She knew he wasn't.  But she grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and shook him a little -- frustrated.  She felt like crying.  "I want to believe you."  

"You can read my mind, but you still doubt it?"

"I want to believe.  It's just . . . hard."  She'd said the same thing in the Danger Room weeks ago and he put his arms around her, wrapping her up and hating the men who'd made her mistrust, who'd made her shy.  But that also made him remember Phoebe -- pretty Phoebe who he hadn't thought about in ages, but now he recalled what he'd done, and the old guilt came crashing back.  Jean sensed it and, troubled by doubts already, reached to discover the cause.  For the first time, he flinched back mentally from her, yet he wasn't experienced enough to keep her out, and she -- clumsy with sudden alarm -- stripped him bare.  

Disillusioned, she pulled away to stare at him, and conscience-stricken, he dropped his gaze.  He couldn't speak; shame had stopped his voice.  He expected her to walk away and leave him there.  But for Jean, it was the back handed confirmation she'd needed, the assurance that what he wanted from her was different.  She wasn't Phoebe.  And he wasn't Ted.  

"I can hardly throw stones, Scott," she whispered.  Tentatively, she reached out to run her palm down the slick leather of his jacket.  "It was a long time ago.  You were drunk at the time, she consented, and you apologized later -- which is a hell of a lot more than anyone ever did for me.  You actually regret it."  

"I didn't mean to hurt her," he said.  

She studied his face.  "I know," she said finally.  "And I didn't mean to hurt Ted.  But he wasn't you."  She brushed his cheek with a fingertip.  "I was waiting for you to grow up," she confessed.  

"I grew up."  

"Yeah, I noticed."  

"You fought it."  

"I did.  But the age difference will never go away.  I'll be forty when you're thirty-two.  Will you still love me when I have gray in my hair and lines on my face and cellulite on my hips?"

He made a choked sound, somewhere between pain and disgust.  "Why do you keep coming back to that?  Why do you think I give a damn?  If I love you, I love you.  I didn't fall in love with your hips, or your hair, or your face.  I fell in love with you, okay?  You keep reducing it to the outside and that's really insulting, y'know?  Like I don't have a heart, or a brain in my head.  How can you possibly say you love me if you think I'm that shallow?"

She could feel the jagged, deep pain behind the question and, for the first time, spun her doubts around to look at them from his perspective.  And he was right.  It was insulting.  "It may take me a while," she admitted finally.  "I do believe you, Scott, or I wouldn't be here.  I just . . .   Be patient with me, okay?  I have to learn to trust you."  She swallowed, almost convulsively, and tilted her head.  "It's like all those bad teen-flicks where the star quarterback asks the science geek to the prom.  That doesn't happen in real life."  

Leaning in, he pushed his forehead against hers.  "I was never a quarterback, okay?  I'm just Scott, who loves Jean.  Can we leave it at that?"

It made her smile, and tear up (embarrassingly) for no good reason.  "Yeah," she whispered.  

"Good.  Now kiss me and unlock the door, so we can go home.  You have to get up early."  

She did as he ordered, though it was rather difficult to find the keyhole when she couldn't look because he had hold of her and was kissing her hard in the (now empty) parking lot.  And the hot flashes happened all over again in the pit of her belly and the backs of her knees.  And he was just Scott.  And she was just Jean.  She wrapped her free arm around his neck as the alchemy of a kiss turned affection into raw carnality, and why, she wondered, did this scare her so much?  That he could make her want him like this?  She'd never felt this for anyone that she could recall, and some part of her was waking up from hibernation.  Wasn't she allowed to feel this?  

Finally, she got the door open, but he didn't seem inclined to stop so he could get in.  She had to pull away.  She was panting.  "Do you still want me to drive?  Everyone's gone."  

"You've been driving since the beginning, Jean."  He wasn't talking about the car.  

Embarrassed, she looked away and walked to the driver's side.  He was right.  She was driving, and she took them back to Salem Center from White Plains, but as they turned onto Greymalkin Lane, she headed right on a little-used access road off the main drive.  "Why are you going to the lake?" he asked.  

She didn't answer, her hands tight on the wheel to keep them from shaking and her throat too dry to speak.  Finally, she came to a stop on a little gravel drive leading to the boat house.  It was pitch black out here away from the mansion or any town, and the car's lights reflected off the side of the building and caught the yellow flash of some animal's eyes as it scurried off.  Her heart was beating fast and she was afraid to look at him, afraid to see his expression.  "I've never done this 'park thing' before," she blurted, "unless you count by proxy."  And she wasn't sure how much that mattered.  In memory, she had a hundred times more experience than Scott, from a hundred different lives; but in her own reality, she had far, far less.  Those lives weren't this life, those bodies weren't her body, and those men weren't this man.  Just Jean.  She had to be just Jean, and this night was hers.  She couldn't let those other lives rob her of her own.  "So what do we do now?"

A momentary pause, then his voice came, sounding amused.  "Well, I'd suggest getting in the back for starters.  Bucket seats don't make things very easy."  Reassured by his tone, she glanced over to find him turned in the seat, watching her.  The dashboard lights reflected off his glasses and high cheekbones.  Sometimes, like now, the stark beauty of his face took her breath away, and she wondered (not for the first time) how much more shocking he would be, if she could see his eyes?  She also wondered (not for the first time) if he'd have looked at her twice, had his life not been disrupted by his mutation?  His last prom date had been the head cheerleader.  But then she remembered his rebuke, outside the theater, not to forget he had a mind and a heart, and was it any less cruel to condemn others for their beauty, than for their homeliness or their age or their skin color?  

Scott watched her watching him, and if he couldn't guess the exact nature of her doubts, her distress was still plain to see in dark eyes huge like a deer's, and liquid.  He felt nervous, too, but a thrumming excitement overshadowed it, and her boldness enchanted him, largely because it was so artless.  Leaning over, he stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles.  "I've never done this 'park thing,' either," he told her.  

Her expression was startled.  "Really?"

"Really."  He didn't think the experience in Lee's van with the crazy girl Pam counted.  "Trust it, Jean," he said.  "Trust yourself.  It's not some performance, okay?"  And reaching around, he unlocked the rear door on his side and got out to climb in back.  Jean watched him over the top of her seat, then abruptly, did the same, joining him.  She'd brought the keys with her and he snagged them away, leaning over the front seat to return them to the ignition so he could turn on the radio.  The station was playing Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing in the Dark."  

You can't start a fire.  You can't start a fire without a spark,
This gun's for hire, even if we're just dancing in the dark . . .
You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart.

"No!"  Then more calmly, "No, no."  She raised her eyes.  They didn't appear frightened, and they weren't demure, and whatever doubts he'd had vanished.  

Leaning across the space between them, palm cupping the back of her neck, he kissed her hard, and it was all fire inside, all sensation.  His skin burned.  There was no room for thinking, only feeling.  "Trust this," he whispered between licking the corner of her mouth and sucking her bottom lip.  "Trust your body.  I won't hurt you.  I won't do anything you don't want to do."  

I know, she replied, and without hesitation, slipped down on the leather seat beneath him, pulling him on top, between her knees.  "Be careful of the glasses," she whispered.  

"They're tight," he whispered back.  "And my eyes are shut."  

"Maybe we should just take them off -- "

"No!"  His turn to protest vehemently, and his whole body had tensed up.  "No.  It's not safe."  

"Okay.  Shhh."  

He shifted, moving his mouth down over her chin to her neck and across her chest to her right breast, impatiently pushing up the fabric to expose black lace.  She was glad she'd taken the trouble to wear something other than cotton tonight, and maybe she should have been ashamed, but she couldn't summon the necessary remorse.  Instead, she locked her ankles behind his legs and pressed his head against her chest.  "Oh, God, oh, God," she muttered over and over, and he rose up a little on his knees, enough so that he could slide his hand over the crotch of her pants, pressing the seam of her khakis against her swollen labia.  She rocked against his hand until he moved it, wiggling his fingers under the waistband while he switch attention from one breast to the other.  But he was a little too eager, and missed his balance, shifting right when he should have shifted left.  

He fell off the seat onto the car floor, almost taking Jean with him.  

It startled them both so much, he sat with his jaw hanging open while she burst out laughing.  That altered his expression from surprise to humiliation and she bit the back of her hand to stop giggling.  "Oh, Scott, I'm not laughing at you.  It's just funny!"

And it was.  Abruptly, he started laughing as well, then came up off the floor, grabbing her in his arms and tickling her.  She squirmed and tickled back, and it ended with him on the bottom and all the tension of their uncertainties dissipated.  They'd been too deliberate; he'd forgotten this was his best friend.  Now, nose to nose, they smiled at each other in the dark.  Just Jean.  Just Scott.  "Love you," he said.  

"Ditto," she replied, then straightened up, grabbing her shirt by the hem and yanking it over her head to fling it into the front seat.  His jacket and shirt followed, and her bra.  He wished he could see better in the dark, had to content himself with touch as his palms examined her body.  "We're going to get cold," she told him.  

"I'll keep you warm."  

"That's a corny line, Scott."  

"Yeah, well, it's true, isn't it?"

She considered that while he kissed her nipples and rubbed her ass through her pants.  She could feel the cool metal of his glasses in contrast to the heat of her flesh.  "Okay, it's true.  Ah -- !"  He was biting.  Just a little.  It felt good.  And this time, he got her pants unzipped and his hand down her panties without either of them falling off the seat.  His fingers explored her swollen slickness, sweet and jagged, and she moaned for him, rocking back and forth on his hand while he brought his other up to pinch and stroke her neglected breast.  Sensation spiked in her, intense and quick, and she rocked harder, breath stopped and trembling on the edge of orgasm like a water droplet held distinct by surface tension.  Scott was awed by the power of it.  "Let go, Jean," he whispered against her pale flesh.  "Let it go.  Trust it.  Trust your body."  Body knowledge -- she couldn't think herself into this, and he wanted to take her there, wanted to give it to her.  He slipped his fingers all the way inside her, stroking, seeking the small, ridged area on the front wall, but it was hard with his hand constrained by two layers of cloth.  She raised herself a bit, trying to push the pants down.  "Just a minute, just a minute," she said.  

He let her go, holding his wet hand apart as she slid her pants off without much formality and then worked on his, but she couldn't tug them past his thighs without him getting up and he wasn't inclined to do that.  Instead, he pulled her back down on top of him so he could reach her breasts again, and her hand closed around his erection.  Don't!  he sent into her head.  I'll come!  

I thought that was the idea?  

Not yet.  I don't want to come yet.  

She let him go, reluctantly, and dragged her hand up over the side of his abdomen to the rise of his ribs.  His own hand went back down between her legs, pushing her thighs wide so he could slide two fingers inside her again, looking for the right spot.  Finding it this time, he shifted his hand until his thumb rubbed her sensitive nub and his fingers could press the magic spot inside, eliciting a shocked yell.  Delighted, he began to fuck her with his fingers, in and out, in and out, and she arched back in the faint moonlight.  It outlined her long abdomen and shallow breasts with an amethyst that turned crimson to his sight.  She was all fever and fire, and she keened as she moved up and down on his hand.  It was utterly raw, no thought, not even room for thought, and he could feel her wanting him.  It excited him so much he thought he might ejaculate on the spot without any help beyond the sight and sound of her.  Touch yourself; show me how you touch yourself, he begged, and she did, even as she slammed down on his hand to force his fingers deeper, her inner muscles clenching on him.  Up and down, up and down, as she rubbed at her nipples with both hands.  He watched, his mind fogged with lust and wonder.  She was wild, like a raptor diving, and when she came, she shrieked.  It wasn't ladylike at all.  He loved it.  

She collapsed on him then and he couldn't stop grinning, though he could sense her surprise.  "I've never come like that," she said.  "Not the first time."  That she didn't usually come at all the first time, he picked up from her mind; but this hadn't been about him.  Maybe he was trying to prove something, he wasn't sure, but it hadn't been about him.  After a minute, she added, "There really is a G-spot."  

"There really is a G-spot," he replied, laughing and wiggling (sticky) fingers.  It had taken a little time, a little patience, and some willing experimentation with Clarice to find it, but once he knew what he was looking for, it wasn't too hard to locate.  

She raised herself up enough to glare down at him, her lips pursed.  "You're awfully pleased with yourself."  

"Shouldn't I be?"

She thwacked him and sat up further.  Her carefully teased hair was a mess and she felt so wet between her legs that she feared she would slick the leather seats.  The whole car smelled of sex, and they'd have to do something about that before anyone else needed to use it.  He seemed happy and relaxed, but not with the same post-orgasmic bonelessness she felt, and she remembered that he wasn't finished.  Sliding off the seat onto the floor, she shook her hair over his chest and he laughed.  "That tickles."  She drew the hair lower, then, over his stomach, and lower to his groin -- heard him hiss in his breath.  "Jean . . ."  Raising her head, just a little, she used a hand to lift his cock and then licked it from base to tip.  "Jean!"

Her turn now, and she gave reign to her imagination, and the memories in her head.  They were good for something.  She blew over the cock head, then drew the flat of her tongue right across the slit, and if she'd never much cared for the taste of semen, she did like how he'd stopped talking and was gripping the door handle with one hand as he tried not to buck.  She ran her tongue-tip all along the flared head and pressed it into the indentation of the frenulum, then swallowed him as far as she could and hummed.  He shouted.  She drew back to whisper, "I'm not on the pill.  Not yet.  Is it okay if we do it this way?"

His teeth were gritted.  "I have a condom."  

"What?"

"In my wallet, I have a condom."  

She licked him again, like a Popsicle.  "Should I be offended by that, or do you always carry one?"

"It was a joke," he replied, breathless.  "Frank gave me one before we left.  It was just a joke."  

"Frank would -- and how do you know it was a joke?"  She stopped and stared at him down the length of his body; he'd raised his head enough to look back at her.  "It's Frank, Scott."  

"Son of a bitch," he muttered, and she just laughed, pulling his pants off and fishing in his back pocket for his wallet, which she handed over to him.  He got out the condom and tore it open, but let her put it on him.  Then he sat up with his back against the seat and she settled on top, long legs to either side as he guided her down on top of him.  She was amazed he didn't come instantly, he was so wound up.  But he didn't, and she tried to hide the fact that it burned when he entered, but didn't think she succeeded; that was the downside of their link.  "You okay?" he whispered.  

"I'm fine," she lied.  And why, she wondered, did this still hurt?  Shouldn't it have stopped hurting by now?  It sure as hell wasn't the first time.  Yet she wanted it more than the pain could put her off.  He was inside her, and that was right; it was right.  

"Fuck me," she whispered, shocking herself with her own frankness.  Ladies didn't say that, and he was shocked, too, but pleasantly.  She decided that she liked being a woman better than being a lady.  "Fuck me," she said again, just to hear it, and he obliged, his hands warm on her hips, showing her his rhythm.  It built in him, the wet slide and intense pressure, his balls clenching, his teeth clenching . . . 

"AH!"

The explosive uncoiling arched him up and raised her off the seat as he pumped into her in spurts.  One, two, three . . . four.  A weak five.  Subsiding on six.  Her arms were strong around his neck and his were about her waist -- mouth to mouth, breathing each other.  "Good God," he said when he was done, and then they didn't say anything, just sat until the blood was back where it belonged and his heart wasn't racing.  He stroked her back compulsively, strumming the ridges of her spine with his thumb.  "Love you," he said against her lips.  

"Ditto," she replied, kissing the tip of his nose.

Go on to Chapter 19, "La Dolce Vita"