Warning:  More adult material.

Delirious and happy, Scott spent most of the next day trying to function past the roar in his blood and the sweet ache in his chest.  Vivid memories of the night before struck him at unexpected moments, while erasing a blackboard, tying a shoe, or picking up a book someone had abandoned on a table in the solarium.  He remembered the reflection of the setting sun in her dark eyes, or the feel of her skin under his thumb, or the way she'd opened her mouth beneath his, not too shy to kiss him back.  (He hated doing all the work.)  Only some of his memories were from the night's surprise ending, and he oscillated between a subdued daze and an exuberant agitation that amused the rest of the mansion's residents, his students not least.  

"They got in after midnight, that's for sure," Julio Rictor told the small crowd of four boys outside near the reflecting pond.  A light wind rippled the water and wafted the scent of freshly mown grass; spiky iris bloomed purple and yellow behind beds of starred dahlias.  "And probably later than that," Julio said to satisfy the curious faces.  "I saw Dr. Grey come downstairs this morning and she looked pretty tired."

"Was she acting as crazy as Summers?" Rusty Collins asked.  

"Dr. Grey?  Not hardly.  But she was grinning," Julio said.  "And she told me 'good morning.'  She never says 'good morning.'"

"Oh, man, he so got some," Rusty announced.  

"Maybe," Julio allowed, "but she didn't come out of his room."

"Don't mean he didn't get some," Rusty argued.  

At supper, Ororo and Frank found themselves alone with Hank after Scott wandered off to phone the hospital.  "That's the third time today," Henry said, frowning.  "He'll get her in trouble."  His mood had been dicey for the past several weeks, and most of the mansion had attributed it to a conference he was to attend in a month -- the first public appearance he'd make since his full (very blue) mutation.  Frank and Ororo had other ideas about the cause, and now traded a glance.  

"I think she would tell him," Ororo said quietly, patting Hank's arm.  Hank didn't reply, but he left soon after.  Ro sighed and raised her eyebrows at Francesco.  He simply shrugged.  

"So," she said after a minute, in French, "did you notice that Scott had the Mercedes out this morning on the driveway, with all the doors open?  He was shining the leather seats with Armor All.  It seemed a strange thing to do between classes."  

Frank's eyebrows hopped.  "Really?  That is odd."  When he didn't say anything else, she kicked him under the table.  "Ow!"

Jean's shift ran until eleven again, and she didn't make it back to the mansion until just before midnight.  Scott had found an excuse to hang out in the garage, working on cars.  Ever since his return from California, he'd once again taken over vehicle care as he'd promised Hank long ago, and as Jean's Camry eased into its usual spot, he stood up from where he'd been checking spark plugs on an old Corvette.  "Isn't it a little late for that?" she called, getting out.  

Embarrassed, he shrugged and strolled over, wiping his hands on a greasy towel, then stopped with perhaps five feet between them, suddenly shy for no good reason that he could think of.  So was she, but he pulled her like gravity and she fell in, approaching him until they were face to face.  Bending but not touching her white coat with his dirty hands, he kissed her.  She kissed back.  Pulling away after a minute, she whispered, "You smell like car engines."  

"Sorry."  Another kiss, quick.  

"Let me go upstairs and change.  I've got to get out of these heels."  

"Why you wear those heels" -- a kiss -- "in the first place" -- another kiss -- "beats me."  

"You're a dope," she told him fondly, and ducked away laughing before he could kiss her yet again, slipping through the side entrance into the back hall.  "Come knock on my door in five minutes."  He sighed and looked at his grease-coated hands, then back at the Corvette, and returned to finish what he'd started.  

In her room, Jean kicked off the pumps and shimmied out of her skirt, draping it over the back of her chair to air out, her suit jacket following it.  The white blouse landed in the laundry bin, and dressed only in bra and panties, she entered the bathroom to brush her teeth, touch up her makeup, and refresh the perfume at her pulse-points.  Then she put on a little silk minidress she liked because it showed lots of leg but was still comfortable, and went to crash on her bed for just a moment because her eyes felt so heavy.  

And naturally, exhausted from a sixteen-hour shift after very little sleep, she dozed off.  

Five minutes later (or maybe four and a half), Scott rapped softly on her door, then rapped again when she didn't answer.  "Jean," he called softly, glancing down the hall in both directions.  He didn't want any students catching him slipping into her bedroom.  There was still no answer, and frowning, a tad worried, he cracked the door.  The lights were on but he didn't see her at first, and was just about to call out when he spotted her collapsed on her bed, her (bare) feet still on the floor.  She was so deeply asleep, she was snoring.  Grinning, he slipped inside the room and stared down at her a minute in the bright glare of a bedside lamp.  One edge of her dress had hiked up enough to show her panties and he ran fingertips over her long thigh, feeling the light hairs.  Could one die of longing, he wondered?  But he could also see the bruises under her eyes from lack of sleep, and bending, he lifted her legs up on the bed, pulling back the sheets and then covering her with them.  Turning out the light, he kissed her temple and left her to sleep (checking the alarm on the way out).  The next morning, when the buzzer went off, she startled herself awake, then remembered why she was wearing something other than nightclothes, and cursed at having stood him up.  She showered, dressed and slid an apology under his bedroom door.  He called her at lunch and they made plans to meet for a late dinner in Manhattan when she got off her shift at nine, then he surprised her by showing up at the hospital itself instead of at Bel Canto.  "Hey, pretty woman."  He had flowers, and was dressed in a jacket and tie.  Charmed, she let him kiss her on the mouth in greeting.  It was the first time they'd done so where anyone they might know could see -- a confirmation of something -- and a few of the nurses behind the station whistled and clapped.  She blushed; he just gave that cocky grin.  

When she ducked behind the station to grab her purse, a Cuban girl named Juanita whispered, "Is he fine, or what?  Look at that mouth!"

Ears warm with both defensiveness and pride, Jean whispered back, "He's also very nice."  

"Ooo, he can be nice to me any day!"

Smiling tolerantly, Jean narrowed her eyes a bit, then glanced at Scott.  He was watching, but she could feel (if not see) that his eyes were locked on her, and her jealousy faded like spring snow.  You have a fan club, she sent.  He gave a little self-deprecating shrug, but not as if he doubted it, and the unconscious conceit of that might have annoyed her if it hadn't been so ingenuous.  Peacock, she told him.  All that got was another of his blinding smiles as she left the station to join him.  

"If I'm a peacock, you're a phoenix," he whispered, taking her free hand and drawing it around to tuck it inside his elbow.  "All that bright plumage."  He ruffled her (freshly dyed) red hair.  

It was a warm night, and they had to walk some blocks after parking.  The lights were bright like her joy, and she liked the burble of people around them.  She kept smiling at him; he kept smiling back.  They held hands tightly.  When they reached the restaurant, they found such a line that they left again, winding up at a deli half an hour from closing time.  He hand-fed her potato chips and she caught his fingers in her mouth at one point, licking off the salt with wet provocation, then smiled when his breath stopped.  Her own boldness thrilled her.  

He took her dancing afterward, and she discovered again that knowing and being weren't the same.  The hard pulse of pop music throbbed in her jaw and sternum and the palms of her hands; she felt almost as if she could caress it.  It slid over her body like a skintight dress, undulating, and she reveled in the feel of his fingers on her hips and his breath on her cheek and the sweet brushes when their bodies connected momentarily.  Dancing was sex with their clothes on.  

Later, tipsy, they stumbled out onto the sidewalk, laughing, and made their way back to their parked cars.  "Are you sober enough to drive home?" she asked him when they stopped beside her Toyota.  He had his arms around her waist and was busy nibbling her jaw line.  

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied against her skin.  "Or fine enough.  It hits me hard, then passes fast."  

"You're not acting fine."  

"I'm not drunk on beer.  I'm drunk on you."  

Laughing, she shoved him back with her hands and her TK both.  "You are such a corndog."  

"That's all?  I thought you were going to say I was a horndog."  

"Oh, God -- get out of here.  You're terrible!  I'll see you back at the mansion."  

With a last kiss on her cheek, he headed off, and it struck her how different this night in town had been than the one a little over a week ago.  She touched the skin of her neck and jaw where his mouth had been.  

Back at the mansion, they wound up in his room because it was closer.  He kicked the door shut and she locked it with her mind.  "Bed is better than a backseat," he muttered while he could still think enough to speak.  How they got their clothes off remained a mystery to them later, but his pants and underwear wound up in a lump under the covers at the foot of the bed, and her dress landed on the floor somewhere in the vicinity of his desk, along with his jacket, shirt, and tie; they didn't find her bra for two days.  The bright turmoil of his body fascinated her, but it was a tender awe.  She wanted him just as much.  It throbbed in her, low in the belly and down between her legs.  His tongue traced her jawline, the point of her shoulder, the hollow inside her elbow, and the scoop of her navel.  Normally, she was too ticklish, but not now.  His palms were hot on her skin and she could feel the scrape of his short nails and the bristle of his beard.  She parted her thighs for him, spreading herself shamelessly as he climbed between them.  They'd gone well past the event horizon of teasing and now hurtled headlong into a singularity of physical fusion.  Despite their ardor, or perhaps because of it, he never made it inside her but spilled himself too early on her white hip, much to his apologetic chagrin.  She whispered that it didn't matter (and kept to herself that she was actually rather glad of it), then shyly asked him to use his hands again on her, which he did, and swallowed her scream by kissing her when she came.  Stunned, they lay together for a while after, all out of words.  She liked the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek, and licked the sweat off his skin like she'd licked the salt earlier.  He tried to rouse himself for twice, but her body was too wrung, and she distracted him with kisses, retiring finally to her own room (borrowing his robe) despite his protests.  "But I want to wake up beside you," he said.  

"Not yet."  

"Why not?"

"I don't know," she replied, and she didn't because she was sure even then that soon she'd be waking up beside him for the rest of her life.  It wasn't the certainty of prescience, like Frank's, just of rightness.  They fit together.  But she still wanted a little space for herself, some elbow room to get used to the idea.  

"I love you," she told him earnestly.  It wasn't a consolation prize.  

He smiled.  "Ditto." 

Just as Achilles had known that his own death would follow on the heel of Hector's, so Francesco Placido knew that when Scott and Jean became a couple, his own days with Ororo were numbered.  Yet Achilles had gone out anyway to avenge Patroclus, and Frank had been making choices for a year that would bring back Scott.  Some matters went beyond the personal.  Nonetheless, he clung to Ro more tightly in the weeks that followed Scott's first date with Jean, and Ororo thought it merely sympathetic ardor; Frank was a romantic.  It was only later that she understood.  

"What the fuck were you thinking, you idiot?"

Back in the jet, covered in streaks of soot and hair singed, Scott had rounded on Frank to bellow like a master sergeant.  "You could have gotten yourself killed back there!  You could have gotten Ro killed!"

"Scott -- " Ororo began

Frank interrupted her.  "It might have gone differently -- "

"I don't give a rat's ass how it might have gone!" Scott interrupted in turn.  "You can't double and triple think everything!  You did that at Fort Tryon, too, and got your leg broke!  Warren had to take you back to the mansion.  And if Ro hadn't been there a few minutes ago, the fire would have had you!"

Frank met Scott's eyes behind the visor and said, "I cannot do otherwise.  You are Cyclops.  You see with a singular vision.  I am Cassandra, cursed by Apollo.  I see everything."  

"Well you damn well can't act on everything in the middle of a crisis!"

"I know," Frank replied.  There was a finality to his answer, and if Scott hadn't meant anything more by his remark than simple admonishment, his mouth now snapped shut and he stared at his friend.  Then without saying anything more, he walked to the front of the jet and sat down in the pilot's seat, starting the engines and staring out the windshield at the blackness of the Arizona desert night.  It was overcast still from Ororo's unseasonable storm (used to extinguish the fire) and he couldn't see any stars.  In the back, he could hear Ororo speaking softly to the boy they'd rescued.  St. John Allerdyce, he'd called himself, a pyrotechnic similar to Rusty Collins, except Rusty created fire -- an energy converter like Scott himself -- whereas John only manipulated it, like Ro manipulated the weather.  

After a minute, Ro joined him, taking the co-pilot's seat.  She didn't look at him; her chin was set.  "He can't help it, Scott," she said, meaning Frank, not the boy.  

"That's the problem," Scott replied as he checked engine gauges.  "He can't help it -- or stop it.  It's his gift.  Fence check -- cleared hot."  And he cranked up the Pegasus engines, swiveling the fans down to lift the Blackbird off the high school basketball court where they'd set down and cloaked themselves.  

He and Ro didn't speak beyond piloting commands all the way back to New York, while Frank sat in the back with the new boy, telling him about Xavier's and answering questions.  That, Scott thought, was where he belonged -- not in a combat situation -- and by the time they settled the plane into its hangar under the basketball court, he knew what he had to do.  

"Ororo," he said as he began a shut down, "would you take John to the professor?  Frank, please stay with me."  

Ro glared at him, lips thin, but did as he asked without further argument.  Mid-plane, she paused beside Frank and spoke to him in French, something soft and low that Scott couldn't hear clearly, even if he'd been able to understand.  He swallowed.  When she and the new boy were gone, Frank took her place in the co-pilot's seat.  Neither of them spoke for a long time while Scott recorded flight data on a clipboard.  Frank just stared out at the hangar.  It was very quiet, only the sounds of the engines humming down and the scratch of Scott's pen on the paper.  Their new uniforms were hot and Scott unzipped his jacket.  Finally, realizing that Frank wasn't going to make it easier on him, he swiveled his seat to look at his friend.  "It's not working."  

Frank nodded in quiet agreement; he hadn't made this easy on purpose.  Scott had to be the leader, not a friend.  

When Frank didn't reply, Scott went on, carefully, "Can you promise it won't happen again?  If I tell you to move, you'll move?"

"No."  

It wasn't the reply Scott had expected and he blinked behind the visor.  He'd assumed that Frank would make whatever promises were required to stay on the team.  But faced with Frank's blunt truth instead, he looked away at the aircraft system displays.  "Frank, I can't take you with us if you're going to freeze up every time you can see three or four outcomes to a crisis."  He glanced up again at his friend.  

Frank's eyes were sad rather than hard or angry.  "I know.  Quit dodging it, Scott."  

"What do you mean?" Scott yelled, frustrated.  "You want me to kick you off?"

"I want you to do what you have to do."  

Scott swallowed.  "Fine.  I want you off the team, Frank -- before you hurt yourself or someone else."  And the irony of that -- of 'firing' Francesco Placido from the very team his own vision had brought into being -- tasted sour.  

But Frank simply nodded and got to his feet, took off his uniform jacket (now devoid of the big, white X-target on the back), and handed it to Scott.  "It's done."  

He left the plane then.  Scott watched him pause in the hangar to light a cigarette, then head inside.  There was a slight hesitation in his pace, a catch of sadness, and Scott sat alone on the plane a while, tap-tap-tapping with his pen against the side-stick controller; finally he went inside as well, his feet dragging.  It was after two in the morning.  Jean was waiting in his room, asleep in his bed, and woke when he came in.  He didn't need to tell her what he'd done.  She read it all out of his mind, along with his grief and his self-reproach, and rising in the room's dark, came to slip her arms around his shoulders, holding him.  For the first time that night, they slept together without a prelude of sex, his head on her chest as she stroked his sweaty hair.  (He hadn't even showered.)

Ororo didn't speak to him for days, though Scott ran into Frank the very next morning at breakfast.  Frank patted the space beside him at the breakfast table.  Scott eyed him a moment, then sat down.  "No hard feelings?"

"Not really.  It was the truth, no?"

"Yeah."  Scott drank his orange juice.  "Xavier doesn't go into the field, either," Scott pointed out.  "Well, not for dangerous stuff."  It wasn't, Scott thought, as if Frank were leaving the mansion, or so he believed then.  Frank didn't reply.  

That was a Sunday, and Jean had the whole day free for a change.  They spent it playing in the pool with the kids.  Scott managed to cut his hand and Jean took him inside to play doctor and wrap it, then they made mute love on her bed with the windows open to the sound of students outside, a plane going by overhead, and the smell of late June heat.  He was on top.  He liked being on top, though he was embarrassed to admit it.  He liked the feeling of power, of possession, and the intensity of sensation from that angle.  But he didn't miss the fact that she bit her lip, brow furrowed, when he pierced her.  It killed something in his chest, and he had a hard time hitting his climax.  If he liked the sense of potency, pain didn't excite him, and he couldn't get past that small frown and the physical pang that had licked at the edge of his awareness.  Afterward, he finally found the nerve to ask, "It still hurts when I enter you, doesn't it?"

A long pause.  Her gaze slid away, towards the windows with their antique walnut casings.  She wished he hadn't brought it up, wished it could have been one of those truths they both knew but didn't discuss.  "Yes."  

Skewered by doubt, he pressed, "Is it me?  Do you need me to go slower, or -- "

"No," she said, turning and putting a finger over his lips.  "No.  It's not you.  It's just the way it is for me."  

"It's not supposed to be like that," he said, raising himself up a little on the sheets and looking down at her.  He was irritated; she sounded content just to put up with it.  "There has to be something we can do." 

Jean stared at him in surprise.  He'd said 'we' -- 'something we can do' -- and tears sprang.  Not understanding, he reached for her.  "Jean, honey, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean -- "

But she buried her face in his chest and clung to him, pouring an emotional syrup of gratitude all over him:  he hadn't seen it as just her problem.  That made him burn with dim anger.  Of course it was their problem.  Though truth be told, he was baffled as well -- Jean certainly wasn't frigid.  She pursued sex with a vigor that charmed and flattered him.  "We'll figure it out," he told her.  

Maybe not, she sent back, feeling melancholy.  She'd turn thirty-one in a month and still didn't like sexual intercourse.  She wondered if she ever would.  

"You're the doctor," he said and got out of bed, annoyed with her defeatism.  "Why don't you find out what we need to do differently and we'll do it?"

Rolling over on the sheets, she watched him head for the bathroom.  Trust Scott, she thought, to take a pragmatic approach.  "It's dyspareunia," she called, forgetting for a moment that the windows were wide open still to the yard below, then she turned bright pink and was glad of her medicalese.  Grabbing her robe, she padded towards the bathroom.  "Pain in intercourse -- dyspareunia," she said more softly as he cleaned himself off, then urinated.  She thought it a measure of their growing ease with each other that he didn't seem to mind her watching him take care of bodily functions.  "About two in every three women suffer from it at some point."  She crossed her arms under her breasts.  

Finished, he eyed her.  "Two in three?  Shit."  Then, "Get me my underwear, please?"

She went to find them, tossing them to him as he came out.  Plain white briefs.  He stepped into them.  She knew he didn't like to be fully naked even in his bedroom, or hers, 'flopping around down there,' as he'd put it once.  They were both a bit prudish, or too aware of the absurd, and she'd never found the nerve to tell him that she thought male bodies fascinating, and not purely for sexual reasons.  As many minds as she'd traipsed through, her own body was that of a woman, the sensations those of a woman when she stroked her skin.  She might have Scott's thoughts (and those of other men), but she didn't live inside his body, and she was coming to understand there was a difference.  

Now, restrained if not dressed, he walked over to sit down on her bed, his hands folded.  She stood with her back to the wall and looked everywhere but at him.  "So what do we do about it?" he asked finally.  

"I don't know," she confessed in a whisper.  It wasn't entirely the truth, but a Victorian shame sealed her lips.  "Just keep going, I guess.  I'll get used to it eventually.  Maybe after I have a baby, or -- "

"Jean!"

She glanced at the open windows, and so did he, but he got up to close them, then turned back to her.  "It's not fun watching you wince.  I'm hurting you -- you think I like that?"

And she felt like crying again.  "I'm sorry."  

"Oh, Christ," he said, crossing to hug her.  "Would you stop it?  I'm not mad at you."  Scott really didn't understand why she got like this at times.  It was as if his sophisticated Jean had been whisked away and replaced by a frightened, self-conscious girl who saw everything as her own personal failure.  "I'm not mad at you," he said again, kissing her temple.  "I love you.  I don't want to hurt you.  It's not supposed to hurt."  Then an idea came to him and he dragged her back to the bed, sat her down, and searched out her reading glasses.  These, he handed to her.  "Put them on."  

She blinked at him like he'd lost his mind.  "What?"

"Just do it."  

"Okay."  She put them on and it made him smile.  He liked her in her glasses, especially when she wore no make-up and he could see her freckles.  His brainy girl.  

"Now, Dr. Grey, you gotta help me.  My girlfriend has this problem with sex."  

She burst out laughing, despite the tears still on her cheeks.  He loved to make her laugh like that, all startled and caught and charmed.  

He got down on his knees in front of her, taking her hand earnestly.  "I'm serious.  I can use my hand on her, and that's fine, but it hurts every time I go inside her.  She likes me, I think --"

"She does."  

"-- but she doesn't like sex."  

"She likes sex fine.  It's intercourse that's the problem."  

And that stopped him.  He'd almost said, 'same thing,' then realized it wasn't.  She was watching him steadily from behind square metal frames and polished lenses, and like his visor was for him, her glasses were her mask.  Perhaps he'd made a joke of it, but she had become Dr. Grey, and he'd fallen in love with this part of her as much (maybe more) than the self-conscious girl.  "All right," he said finally.  "She likes sex.  How do we fix the intercourse problem?"

She frowned down at her hands, fisted and opened them again.  A woman's hands, not a girl's, with skin that had gone just a bit slack, and she spoke in that slightly-swallowed inflection she had.  She always sounded as if she chewed her words before spitting them out.  "Some women tighten up spasmodically when their partner attempts penetration.  There can be any number of reasons for it from a strict religious upbringing to previous bad experiences."  The slight edge in her voice when she said 'bad experiences' made him reach out to catch her fingers in his.  "But vaginas were made to widen -- they have to fit a baby's head -- so treating this amounts to teaching the woman to relax until she can accommodate her partner's penis comfortably."  

"So how do we do it?"

Jean still wasn't meeting his eyes; she tilted her head a little and her lips were pursed.  "Time," she said after a minute.  "Patience.  A little creativity -- increasing the number of fingers slowly, using a dilator -- "

"How about a vibrator?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood.  

She teetered for just a moment, rage flashing in her eyes, pupils dilated with the fear that he was making fun of her.  Then her lips tipped up as she realized he wasn't and she snapped from Dr. Grey to Just Jean.  Pulling off her glasses, she frowned at him with mocking seriousness and said, "What?  You want sex toys now?  After only six weeks?"

"Vibrator isn't my toy," he replied, flashing teeth.  

"You're insufferable."  

"And you love me anyway."  

"God knows why."  

"Because . . . " He leaned in until they were nose tip to nose tip and she could see her eyes reflected in the mirror of his lenses, and his own eyes behind them, glowing red, a little demonic, or at least demented.  "Christ, I haven't got a friggin' clue why."  And he laughed, pulling back.  "Because you're insane?"

Smiling, she fell against him, arms around his shoulders.  "I love you because you say 'our problem' instead of 'your problem.'  And because you're really cute in the morning with bed-head and your face all sleepy, tripping on the way to the bathroom because you're not awake yet."  

"It's your damn shoes I trip over."  

"Oh yes, the 'goddamn motherfucking stupid fuck-me heels.'  Can't you be more creative than that?"

"What do you want when I'm half-asleep?"  He flopped back on her bed, stretched, and grinned up at her.  "So -- wanna wake up to my bad swearing every day?"

She blinked at him.  "What?"

"Move in with me."  

Startled, she ran a hand through her hair.  "Move in with you?"  It had been only six weeks, or really, five and a half, from mid-May till the end of June, and she hadn't told her parents yet, nor had he told his.  They'd lived in their private bubble of a spring romance, awash in the glow.  Yet she couldn't think of a single, good, concrete reason not to move in with him.  For all it seemed rushed, they'd known each other five years, and a part of him lived in her head.  Looking down at him, stretched out on her bed in his underwear, as easy as a cat, she suddenly couldn't imagine him not there, couldn't imagine anyone else in his place.  Besides, she thought, half her clothes were in his room and half of his were here.  They might as well consolidate.  

More to the point, he needed the confirmation.  She understood that, glimpsed it quite suddenly, hiding in the tenseness of his jaw despite his apparent ease.  If she craved the reassurance of his devotion, he wanted their relationship to be public, wanted to know he meant more to her than a guilty pleasure.  Wanted to know she wasn't ashamed of him.  And she wasn't.  Not anymore.  

Running her forefinger along one clavicle, she said, "What room do you think we should use?  Yours or mine?"

His grin was sudden and bright.  "You've got the suite.  Mine might be a little cramped."  

"Ah!"  And she fell on him, pinning him to the sheets (though he was hardly trying to get away).  "He only loves me for my sitting room."  

"And the veranda.  You forgot the veranda."  

"You're such an opportunist." 
 

Scott and Jean occupied two chairs in front of Xavier's desk as yellow morning sunlight danced dust motes through the air near one curtained window.  A globe of the world in a wooden frame rested nearby, and Scott and Jean had come early, before she had to leave for her shift at the hospital.  "We're going to move in together," Scott had said when they were seated and the door was shut.  Then they'd traded speaking back and forth, like a pair of trained parrots.  Xavier had listened from his wheelchair, hands folded in his lap.  Finally, Jean had ended their announcement-cum-apology with, "We'll take an apartment nearby, if you'd rather.  If you don't want the students to, um -- "

"Don't be ridiculous," Xavier said finally, losing his patience.  "Sharing a room is rather more dignified than one or the other of you skulking up and down the hall after midnight."  And they both instantly went three shades pinker than Scott's glasses.  "The students are not fools.  Neither am I.  And Frank and Ororo have been sharing a room under my roof for five years."  Which was true, Scott thought, glancing at Jean, who had her eyes lowered.  Her lashes were straight rather than curved, and fragile like dragonfly wings.  

"You are not children," Xavier said, reminding them of his admonishment on the first night he'd caught them sneaking back into the mansion.  "As long as you comport yourselves with dignity and restraint in public, what sleeping arrangements you make are not my concern.  Although with the way things have been going, having another empty room might be advantageous."  He let an edge of humor slip into the comment.  He really wasn't angry, and if it might take him longer to get over his reservations, that was his business, just as what they did behind closed doors was theirs.  "I assume you'll be taking Jean's room, since it's larger?"

"Yes, sir," Scott said.  

"Then please let me know when the empty room is available for occupation again."  

"Thank you, professor," Jean said as they stood and Scott ushered her out with shaking hands that he'd been trying to hide through the entire interview.  

In the hallway beyond, they just looked at each other.  His eyebrows hopped.  "That went easier than I thought."  

She nodded.  "I need to go or I'll be late."  She hesitated, then added, "Why don't you start moving things?  Into my room, I mean.  I have to work till seven again, but you can start even if I'm not there."  

"Okay."  

They parted company with a chaste kiss. 
 
 
 
 
 

"So can you two come?"

Jean spun around from where she'd been writing med orders in charts.  She was in her first week of neurology, which was only one floor up from OB/GYN, so she saw Barb more than usual.  "I kinda doubt it.  Scott said something last night about taking the kids up to one of the big parks for the weekend, he and a couple of the other teachers, as a summer field trip, so I'm not sure -- "

"Jean," Barb interrupted, "Why don't you want me to meet him?"

Muscles knotted in Jean's neck and her stomach twisted.  "What makes you think that?"

"'Cause you've been dating this guy for eight weeks and I have yet to meet him, and any time I invite you over, or propose we all go out somewhere, there's an excuse.  It's not brain surgery, darlin', whatever floor you're working on."  She drew Jean away, off against a far wall where the nurses couldn't overhear.  "What is it?  Does he hate cats or something?"  She grinned.  

That made Jean smile.  "Actually, I have no idea if he hates cats."  She looked away and wrung her fingers against each other.  "It's just that he's, well, shy and -- "

"A guy sportin' a grin like the one in that photo you showed me ain't shy.  And you told me he used to sing lead for a band.  Try again."  

Jean's eyes flicked over Barb, away, back, and away again.  Disjointed snippets of conversations around them seemed loud, and someone, somewhere, was listening to the radio.  "He's a mutant," Jean said softly, three stone words thrown into the pool of their friendship, sending ripples.  

Barb didn't answer for a minute, though her expression didn't change.  "That's how you met him, isn't it?  Through your research?"

"Partly.  He really did hit my car."  

Nodding, the other woman pursed her lips and looked away.  Fluorescent lights gleamed off her short blonde curls.  Jean had half-expected reassurances that it didn't matter, but they weren't forthcoming.  The silence stretched.  "What's his mutation?" Barb asked finally.  

"He's an energy converter.  His body absorbs solar energy and converts it into force blasts."  

"Sounds dangerous."  

"He's one of the gentlest men I know," Jean retorted.  She'd begun to tremble a little with fear, a little with anger, and a veil of uncertainty had dropped over her vision, tucking it in at the corners so that she could focus on only one object at a time.  "He's not dangerous," she added.  

"Okay," Barb said and, turning abruptly, she walked away.  Jean stared after a minute, wondering what had just happened.  

"Dr. Grey," one of the nurses called, holding up the chart she'd been writing in.  Breathing out softly, Jean pushed away from the wall and went back to work.  

Three hours later, Barb was back.  "I'd like to meet him," she said without preamble as she caught Jean emerging from a patient's room.  "I've never met a mutant," she added.  

Jean pursed her lips.  Three hours had been time enough for irritation to build.  "He doesn't live in a petting zoo," she snapped, then breathed out and looked down at the white tile floor.  "Sorry."  

"S'okay.  I probably deserved it."  Once again, uncomfortable silence stretched.  "Let's go down to the family room," Barb said and Jean nodded, then led them to a little room set aside for doctors to deliver bad news to family members.  It was decorated in shades of gunmetal blue, maroon and pink -- calm colors -- with low lighting.  Generic sea prints hung on the wall, as if offering infinite symbolic horizons.  "They make me nervous," Barb began without preamble, or sitting down.  "Mutants."  

The confession burned like a bullet to Jean's gut.  

"It's just the idea of it -- of people having special powers like that."  Barb hugged herself and couldn't look at Jean.  "From a scientific point of view, it's interesting and all.  I can understand why you'd want to study it.  But at the practical level?  There are people running around out there who can do things nobody can stop."  

Frozen by a mixture of disillusionment, anger, and unexpected sympathy, Jean tried to swallow and couldn't.  

"I never thought I'd be prejudiced," Barb said quietly.  "I try not to be.  I don't like it.  I was raised in a town where people still use the word 'colored' without blinking and I always hated that.  Peel back the skin and what's the difference?  Maybe that's why I went into medicine.  But peel back a mutant's skin and they're not the same.  And I feel horrible for saying it."  She stopped there.  No 'but' followed it, just the bald statement of personal embitterment.  

Thawing enough to think, Jean remembered what the professor always said:  They're scared, and it's fear that breeds hate.  Jean could understand that in the abstract, could accept fear in the faces of strangers on the street, but this wasn't an unknown face.  This was the woman she ate dinner with, traded jokes with, the one who'd called to ask about her when she'd been ill, the one who'd taught her not to be ashamed of what she felt for Scott.  Squeezing her eyes shut, she struggled not to cry and kept her telepathy tightly reigned.  Even so, she could sense that Barb was just as miserable, and it was that shared anguish that birthed Jean's courage to speak.  

"Mutants may have different physiologies, it's true.  Scott sees differently than you or I, literally.  But look into his heart?  He's the same -- what he feels is just the same.  He laughs, he gets mad, he loves, he cries.  No different."  

Barb sat down finally on one of the couches.  Jean sat down opposite her.  "It's not really about him," Barb said.  "From everything you've told me, he sounds like a good man.  But he's just one person."  

"You can't condemn everyone, Barb --"

"I'm not condemning anyone!" Barb snapped.  "I said they scare me.  That's not the same thing.  I'm not stupid enough to believe it's their fault, or that they chose it, or that it's some kind of divine punishment." 

Jean pursed her lips, keeping to herself how condescending that sounded.  

"I don't condemn them," Barb went on.  "But they scare me all the same."  

"Maybe you scare them."  

The other woman stopped and stared, mouth dropping open until she looked mildly foolish.  "Why would they be scared of me?"

"Because they're a minority, and minorities always depend on a society's goodwill."  Jean paused to stare into one of the generic pictures; it showed a small fishing vessel on a stormy sea.  How apt.  "But if the atmosphere is distrustful, they respond defensively -- or offensively."  She risked a glance at Barb, who listened as if she'd never thought of it that way, and maybe she hadn't.  

"In my experience," Jean said now, "most mutants simply want to be left alone, and some are frightened by their own powers.  Think -- if they scare you, how must it feel to be a mutant?  Take Scott for instance; he has these force blasts.  They're generated by his eyes -- "

"His eyes?"

Jean shrugged.  "It makes sense, when you think about it, even if it seems odd at first.  It's all of a piece.  Whatever he sees -- literally -- he can target.  And no, he's not a living weapon.  He hates to think of himself that way."  Jean reached into the pocket of her white lab coat and pulled out her key ring, tossing it to Barb.  Hanging off the ring amid the jingle of keys was a bit of olive wood fashioned into her name:  Jean.  "That was my Christmas present a couple of years ago.  He carves wood for fun.  The force blasts are better than a knife.  He's started doing bigger things now that he's got the hang of it."  

Barb looked at the key tag, then handed it back.  "It's nice."  

"It is.  But he worries all the time that he might accidentally hurt somebody, too.  He can't change who he is.  All he can do is learn to be responsible . . . and learn to carve wood.  Mutation is like any special gift.  A genius in physics can solve the energy crisis, or create the H-Bomb.  I know it's a cliché, but it's true.  A pissed-off postal worker with a gun is more dangerous than Scott is."  

"What about a pissed-off postal worker without a gun but who had Scott's mutation?" Barb asked, quietly.  "We license people to own guns."  

Jean looked away, because it was something they worried about themselves.  "So do we blame mutants -- or postal workers?"  Her lips twisted into a wry smile.  "A license won't stop a guy from shooting his wife in a 'domestic dispute,' and it doesn't stop someone from stealing a gun, or buying one illegally.  It's the person, not the weapon.  There's no easy answer, but you're not the only one who's scared, and some of the ones who are most scared are mutants.  All it takes is one bad apple.  But you can say that of any minority, Barb."  

"I know."  Once again, she seemed embarrassed, and as upset and disappointed and confused as Jean.  She was offering something more rare than platitudes and tolerance; she was offering her honest uncertainties, her fears.  These were real feelings, real nakedness.  

Abruptly, Jean reached out to grip Barb's hand.  "Would you like to meet a mutant?"

Barb looked at her, smiling a little.  "I thought you said he didn't belong in a petting zoo?"

"Would you like to, though?  Would it make you feel better -- less scared?"

Barb wrestled with that.  "I don't know," she said truthfully.  "Maybe it would."  

Jean smiled.  "Then you're sitting across from one."  

Barb jumped, and Jean watched first surprise, then understanding wash over her face, and she wondered if she'd just made the bravest choice of her life, or the most stupid.  "That's why . . ."  Barb trailed off.

"Why I went into mutant genetics?  Yes, that's why."  

"What do you . . . do?"

Jean glanced at the table beside them.  A phone, a lamp, and a box of generic ivory tissues.  Reaching out with her hand, she lifted the tissue box and drifted it across to where she could catch it out of the air.  For now, she'd keep the telepathy to herself.  Start small.  

"My God," Barb squeaked, and Jean could sense that she was torn between amazement and white terror.  "How much can you lift?"

Jean's expression was wry.  "Not a whole lot more than this.  I've spent most of my time on grad and medical school, not training the TK.  I'm not very powerful.  I can lift books, chairs, clothes, tissue boxes" -- Jean held it up, then sent it to drift back to the end table -- "dinner dishes . . . that kind of thing.  The more delicate it is, the harder, actually.  I don't want to break it.  Mom's a little iffy on me and the china."  She glanced at Barb.  "I'm like Scott -- I don't want to hurt anything.  'I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:  I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow . . .'"

". . . to follow.'"  Barb's voice picked up hers, "'I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required . . . '"

Jean's voice broke and she could feel the hot wet in her eyes.  "I'm a doctor.  I'm a doctor first and last.  I took the same oath you did and my DNA doesn't change that.  I just want to help people."  

Barb stared, and then -- quite abruptly -- leaned forward to hug Jean hard.  "Thank you.  For trusting me."  

Jean hugged back, glad she hadn't erred in her choice of friends, and she remembered something else Xavier had told her, at the same time he'd spoken of hatred and fear -- neither reason nor logic would change hearts, and theoretical mutants remained theoretical.  Bloodless.  It took a friend with skin on. 

"So she's okay with it?"

"Well, she's not spazzing completely," Jean told Scott as they lay in bed together.  "You sure you don't mind going over to dinner Saturday?  It could be a little . . . strained."  

"Then we'll drink a lot of beer.  I'd like to meet her finally, and her husband and kid."  

"And cats?"

"Well . . . they're cats."  

"You don't like cats?"

"I don't dislike cats."  

She laughed.  "There are five of them.  All Siamese."  

"Oh, Christ.  Yeowl!"

He was swatted for that.  "They're very nice cats!"

"I'm sure."  

"She could probably get us a cat."  

Instead of replying, he rolled her onto her back with himself above -- and kicked Ralph the snow leopard off the bed.  "The real question is if you're okay with this?"

"With what?"

"With her knowing."  He hadn't missed her worry, and now she looked away in the dark of the room.  Their room.  

"I guess."  Despite Barb's tentative acceptance, Jean couldn't help but fear it might change when the woman had time to reconsider.  "It's a risk."  

"I know," he said softly, and enclosed her with his body.  She smiled against his neck in the dark. 

The day had opened with the pregnant heat of late July, the kind that left animals and children sprawled in torpid exhaustion.  But by one in the afternoon, purple-angry clouds had gathered and it was storming hard enough to take out power lines, crash branches, and cause flash flooding in low areas.  Yet not one of the weathermen had predicted any such break in the temperatures.  

Scott peered out the window at a lone figure standing in the midst of it, barely visible behind the sheets of rain, but he could still make out the white hair and outstretched arms.  Lips pursing, he went in search of her other half.  

Frank sat beneath the porch overhang, smoking.  He, too, was watching the figure in the storm.  "What the hell is going on?" Scott said from behind him, standing in the open door.  Even from here, he could feel the mist of heavy rain, and it wasn't like Ororo to mess with weather patterns this drastically, except in an emergency.  She felt the weather, how it created a web of interrelatedness, and didn't abuse it.  Or not most of the time.  

Now, though, Frank simply reached up to hand Scott a letter whose return was stamped Università degli Studi di Firenze, DISPO, Dipartimento di Scienza della Politica e Sociologia.  The Department of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Florence.  "What the fuck?" Scott asked, baffled.  

"I am going home."  

Scott sat down on the step before he fell down.  "Why?  This is home."  

"No, Scott.  This has been a sanctuary, but it is not home."  

"I never meant you had to leave!  When I said that, about the team, I didn't --"

"Of course you did not.  Nonetheless.  It is time for me to go home.  I have things to do."  

"Couldn't you do it here?  You could finish college here, and --"

"Do you think America is the only country that has mutants?"

"Well, no, of course not, but --"

"What can I do from here?  This is not my country.  I am going home where I can do some good with the gifts I do have."  

Scott didn't reply immediately, simply frowned out at the storm and the rocking branches in the pines.  "So what are you going to do?  Start Westchester Italia?"

"Perhaps."  Frank smiled faintly.  "I am not a fighter, Scott, not as you are.  So I will fight with words and the law, and guard, as best I can, the rights of mutants in Europe."  

"The professor approved of this?"

"Oh, yes.  It is he who will pay for university."  

Sometimes, Scott reflected, it felt as if Frank and the professor were directors in some grand play for which the rest of them simply read parts.  "I take it Ro isn't going with you?" he asked finally.  

"She is not.  She is needed here."  At least for the time being, Frank added to himself.  What the future held remained to be seen, but for now, Ororo couldn't be spared from this place, whereas his own path had diverged on the night Scott had told him he couldn't remain on the team.  

"When are you leaving?"

"At the end of the month."  

"Is your mother going?"

"No.  Only me."  

Scott shook his head, then boxed Frank fondly on the ear.  "I'm going to miss you."  

"There are planes, you know.  Italy is a lovely country for visiting when there is snow in New York."  

Grinning, Scott crossed his arms over his knees and they both watched Ororo out in the rain.  "You will keep an eye on her?" Frank asked.  "See that she is safe?"

"You bet."  

And thus, it was settled.  At the end of July, Frank boarded a plane back to Italy, chasing his visions across an ocean, going home. 
 

"Hey, Daddy."  

John Grey glanced up as the familiar voice drifted from behind the stacks of books that made a maze of his office.  She wound through it, his Ariadne, finding his desk at the center, and rising, he gave her a kiss.  "What are you doing here, baby girl?"

She looked about for a non-existent chair, then settled on a stack of books instead.  Dust puffed up and she waved a useless hand in the hair.  "You've been in the Olin Building how many years now, and you still have stacks of unshelved books?"

Hands on hips, John Grey eyed his daughter.  "You didn't drive three hours to talk about my sloppy office habits."  Jean had always come to him first when she had news she didn't think her mother would want to hear, and truth be told, he'd never dissuaded her.  Sarah took after Elaine, but Jean took after him, right down to her height and the red in her hair.  

Now, she looked off and twisted her hands on her knees, and he suspected that, whatever the news was, she had her doubts as to how he'd receive it.  "I have a boyfriend."  

His eyebrow went up.  "And?"

"It's Scott.  Scott Summers.  You know, Scott -- "

"I know who Scott is."  John sat back down in his chair.  It creaked, and he stared at the papers covering his desk, slick fliers from academic publishing companies, a draft of the seven-year review the department had undergone the previous semester, a prioritizing report for the college, and minutes from the last meeting of the faculty senate.  Pushing them aside, he stood again, like a jack-in-the-box.  "Come on, let's walk."  

Bard had all the quaint beauty of any New England college -- landscaped flower beds, neo-Roman architecture, ivy-covered buildings.  In summer session now, there were fewer students about as father and daughter ambled along a sidewalk.  "Are you disappointed?" Jean asked finally.  

"I don't know.  You tell me.  Should I be?"

"No."  A twitter of three white-striped, male Carolina Wrens competed in the grass for the attentions of a dun-dull female.  Jean watched them.  "I love him."  

John thought back to the protective caution he'd seen in the face of the boy when he'd met him at Xavier's.  He'd seemed ready to plant himself between Jean and any harm, like a bulwark.  John Grey had liked that protectiveness, but -- "You said he left Berkeley.  What's he doing with himself now?"  The department head in him was dubious of defecting graduate students.  

"Teaching math for the professor.  He left Berkeley because his advisor was sacked, Daddy, not because he quit.  You know how department politics can be."  

Indeed, John did.  But he also knew he was hearing only one side of the story, and John Grey was inclined to reserve judgment, both of Berkeley and of Scott Summers.  "Is he going back to school?"

"He'll have to, at least for a master's, or he won't be able to teach more than five years in New York."  

"That's all he's going to do?  Teach high school?"

"Isn't that good enough?"  Her chin had gone up.  "I thought you told me once that teaching of any kind was a noble profession, right down to preschool."  

John frowned.  "It is."  And he believed that -- until it came to the prospects of the man dating his daughter.  He didn't want Jean saddled with ballast.  This was his baby girl, no matter how old she got.  

Jean knew as much, even without her telepathy.  Reaching out, she laid a hand on his arm.  "He respects me."  

"If he respects you, then why'd he let you come up here to run interference?"

She smiled.  "He doesn't know I'm here."  

John sighed.  "And you're counting on me to run interference with your mother now?"

Her smile deepened; she didn't even pretend to deny it.  "I love him," she said again instead.  

They eyed one another.  "All right," John said finally.  "Bring him to dinner for your birthday."  

She threw her arms around him.  "Thank you, Daddy." 

"Hey, Mom, it's Scott -- Mike.  I have some news."  

There was a moment of startled silence over the line.  "I wondered when you were going to call," his mother said.  "We got your letter about withdrawing from Berkeley."  A hesitation.  "Your father isn't happy."  

Sitting down on the edge of the bed he now shared with Jean, Scott twisted the phone cord into loops around his fingers.  "I didn't think he wanted me to go to Berkeley in the first place."  

"He didn't.  But we didn't raise you to be a quitter, either."  

"I didn't quit, Mom.  They denied tenure to my advisor and that didn't give me a lot of options but to go somewhere else."  

"I thought you said you withdrew -- ?"

"I did.  But it was because I couldn't stay there, not because I gave up."  He made no mention of Jean.  

"So you are planning to go back to school in the fall?"

Sighing, he rubbed his forehead.  "No, Mom."  In his mind's eye, he could see her tense up.  "I've got to apply to a different school, be accepted, hopefully get another assistantship -- I can't just leap frog.  So I'm going to teach math next year for the professor, here at the academy.  I figure I owe him a thing or two."  

"Teaching math?"

"What's wrong with that?"

She didn't reply, and Scott supposed that she wouldn't think she needed to.  His father was a lieutenant colonel in the air force, a decorated vet, and what was he?  He frowned as his fingers made a complicated knot of the curled cord.  "The longer you stay out," she warned, "the harder it'll be to go back.  Life has a way of tying you down."  

"I know."  A pause.  "Anyway, I didn't call to talk about the mess with school.  I wanted to tell you I have a girlfriend, and it's kind of serious."  

"Serious?  As in marriage serious?"

"Well, I don't know about that yet, but yeah, serious as in, um, we're sharing the same bedroom serious."  And as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he squeezed his eyes shut, wishing them back.  He hadn't intended to say that, but her question about marriage had thrown him and he'd spoken without thinking.  

And three thousand miles away, in San Diego, Kate Summers was suddenly unsure how to respond.  Scott usually talked about his dating only in passing, and his parents hadn't pried.  Chris and Kate had recognized long ago that a boy with Scott's face would have girlfriends, and Chris had warned him about responsibility a time or three, but they'd left it at that.  To Kate, sex was something that normal boys did, if they had an opportunity, and normal girls, too (honestly), but the good girls didn't flaunt it.  

Publicly sharing a bed outside wedlock was flaunting it.  "Your professor has sanctioned this?"

"We're adults, Mom.  It's our private life."  

"But you're living there at the mansion with this girl, where the students can see?  And Charles Xavier thinks that's acceptable?"

"It's not Catholic school, Mom."  It came out harsher than he'd meant it.  

"Catholic or not, there are morals, Mike.  Scott."  He could hear the fluster in her voice, and not over what name to use.  "If you're teaching teenagers, you ought to make an effort to hold yourself to a higher standard!"

Scott's jaw dropped.  "What?  You think I'm doing her on a table in the dining hall?"

"Mike, don't be crude!"

"You implied it!"

"I did not!  But I think there's a certain code of behavior -- "

"I won't be a hypocrite!  I don't think there's a damn thing wrong with sex before marriage and I'm not going to hide my actions like I'm ashamed when I'm not.  It's my private life."  

"You're a teacher!"

"We're not parading around in front of the kids!  But I'm not going to lie about it.  The fact we did move in together ought to damn well say something.  That's what I called to tell you.  I'm in love, and it's serious.  You asked if it was marriage serious -- well, I don't know, it's a little early for that -- but maybe so.  I'd thought you'd be happy.  You didn't even ask who it was before you launched into a lecture.  Don't you want to know?"

"Well, yes, of course I do."  

"It's Jean -- Jean Grey."  

"Your friend the doctor?"

"Yeah.  Not exactly trailer-park trash, y'know?"

And thrown for a second time that night, Kate Summers fell silent.  She knew her eldest, knew the tone of his voice, and heard the pride in it.  He'd called because he wanted to strut, like a hunting dog who'd brought back an especially fine catch.  But the mother in Kate felt only alarm, and now aimed her questions with a mother's instinctive intuition.  "Did you go back to New York for her, honey?  Did she ask you to come back?"

Scott was startled.  "No."  It wasn't, technically, a lie, he thought.  Jean hadn't asked him to come back, and if he had returned for her, that had been his choice.  "We only started dating a couple months ago -- after I was back."  That wasn't a lie, either.  

"Honey, the both of you . . . from everything you've told me, you come from two very different worlds -- "

"What is this?" he yelled into the phone.  "Can't you approve of anything I do?"

"This isn't about 'approval'!  I'm simply trying to tell you something sensible, Michael.  Whatever you may feel, and if this is as serious as you say -- you still have to be compatible, share the same values, the same ideals, the same beliefs . . . ."  

"You didn't say this about Clarice!  And she was black!"

"And she came from a background more like yours, and was much closer to your age!"

Scott ground his teeth and got up to pace around.  "So you care about the age thing, too."  

Kate didn't miss the 'too.'  "I worry" -- she stressed it -- "about a lot of things.  The age difference is part of it, yes, but not all of it."  Not even most of it, she thought to herself and sighing, ran a hand through her hair.  "This woman is from a completely different class than us, and I don't want you to feel . . . intimidated, or put down for that."  

Scott opened his mouth to reply, then swallowed it.  His fingers kept twining and untwining the phone cord while he stared at nothing.  He was angry, upset, disenchanted, but mostly resentful.  At the root of it, they all worried about the same thing -- the professor, EJ, his mother . . . "Thanks, Mom," he said now.  "Thanks for the vote of confidence.  You don't think I'm good enough for her, do you?  You think I'm getting above myself with an upper class girl and her fancy degree!"

He heard her shocked, "Honey!  That is not --" as he pulled the phone away from his ear and slammed it down into its cradle on the nightstand by the bed.  Then he stared at it for the rest of the evening, missing supper.  It rang three different times, but he didn't answer.  

Jean found him still sitting there when she got home after eight, and picking up on his black mood (and that sometimes he was better coaxed out of brooding than talked out of it), she doffed her shoes and, still in her dress pants, climbed onto the bed to wrap him up from behind.  He didn't respond immediately, but gripped her wrist with one hand, and gradually her patience succeeded.  He let her into his head to see what had hurt his heart.  After a few moments, she leaned around to press her lips to his temple.  Those were your words, Hon, that you're not good enough.  That's what you're afraid of.  

It's what they're afraid of, too.  

I don't know -- maybe it is, maybe it isn't.  But it's not their heads I'm in.  It's yours, and it's you I'm worried about.  You have nothing to prove to me.  

I did once.  It took me four years, almost five, to prove it.  

And you succeeded.  Now be a good little mathematician and put the pencil down.  The problem is solved, the proof is done.  Let it go, Scott.  You're always telling me to quit living in the past.  Take your own advice.  Having you in my bed is not a pity fuck.  He coughed at that, a little burst of breath at the bluntness of it, though he knew her brain was rarely so prim as her mouth.  

"I belong to you," she whispered, giving it reality by giving it voice.  "All yours.  And you belong to me.  So quit worrying and we'll show the rest of them that they don't have any reason to worry either.  Deal?"  Reaching around, she extending her pinky in front of him.  

Scott just blinked at it.  "What are you doing?"

"Just hook your pinky into mine.  I'll show you."  A bit dubious, he complied, and she said, "We're going to prove to them all that we're not a mistake, right?"

"Damn right."  

She yanked her pinky free of his.  "There.  It's done, and we have to keep it because it's a pinky promise."  

"It's a what?"

"A pinky promise."  

Turning to look at her, he caught her impish smile and fell back on the bed, putting a pillow over his face to muffle his laughter.  "My girlfriend is a loon!"

Notes:   La dolce vita means "the sweet life" in Italian, and is the title of a famous Fellini film.  Yes, that is James Marsden's face in the manipulation at the page top, with Famke Janssen.  Isn't Pugui amazing?  

Go on to Chapter 20, "Tumbling Down"