Warning:  Some adult material, but more notably, the recounting of an event that may well bring up difficult memories for some.  Proceed with caution.

Thus, when he pulled up the Mercedes before a massive iron gate in a long brick wall and spotted the white, three-story colonial manor behind it, he was stunned.  "That's your house?" he asked, before he could think to bite it back.  

Feeling his astonishment, she glanced at him.  "Well, it's my parents' house, yes."

"Where did Annie live?" he asked, still trying to reconcile his mental image with the reality.  

"Down there," Jean said, pointing behind them to a quiet street lined by ash trees and old New England homes, quaint and lovely, but mundane enough.  "That Tudor right there with all the plants out front."  It was, Scott thought, perfectly bohemian and exactly what he'd expected -- if two or three hundred thousand dollars nicer.  (Clearly 'faculty ghetto' was figurative, not literal.) He just hadn't expected that Jean had come from the House on the Hill, and knew that he could never, from his own ambitions, provide her with anything like this.  Even if he lived now at a mansion that was twice as large, it wasn't his, that world wasn't his, and he felt it acutely.  His mother had been right.  He was an East End boy dating a West End girl, and he'd been an idiot to think this relationship had any future.  

"What's the code for the callbox?" he asked, trying to keep his voice level as he rolled down the window.  

"Actually, I'm not sure these days.  They rotate it.  Just hit the buzzer; they're expecting us.  Scott, are you all right?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine."  

Jean knew he was lying, but returning here, it was so easy to slip back into the world of pretenses and cropped conversations that she let it go.  When they reached the house proper, she had him park behind her sister's car on the circle drive.  Sarah and her brood had been invited, of course.  It was Jean's Golden Birthday -- the thirty-first of July on which she turned thirty-one -- but the real draw was the fact that Jean was bringing home a man for the first time ever.  Even Ted Roberts hadn't been granted this privilege.  

Sweating a little (which he chose to attribute to the heat), Scott opened the door of the Mercedes and got out, adjusting his tie and picking up the sports jacket from the back seat to don it.  He was so nervous, his hands were shaking.  

You look wonderful.  

Her telepathic voice slid unexpectedly into his mind like fingers into his hand (even if she stood on the car's other side), and he glanced at her.  She smiled, and looked so elegant standing there in her coral linen (Helmut Lang) pantsuit -- so suited to this place -- that it took his breath away.  

Just Jean, she sent.  Just Scott.  Remember?

It made him smile back.  I'll try.  

Walking around to her side of the car, he took her hand and set it in the crook of his arm -- a little trick his father had taught him once.  ('Don't stick out your elbow like an oaf and expect the girl to grab it.  You take her hand with your free one and wrap it over your arm.')  Jean had always liked such small courtesies, perhaps because he respected her enough that they couldn't be misconstrued as patronizing.  

As they approached the door, it opened to reveal John Grey in slacks and a golf shirt, and Scott felt overdressed.  "Come in, come in," he said, kissing his daughter --"Happy Birthday" -- then shaking Scott's hand.  "Why don't you get out of the noose," he said, tapping the base of his throat to indicate Scott's tie.  "It's just a family dinner, and it's summer -- too hot for that."  But it was said in a friendly way, and he opened the door wider to let them enter.  Another man had come into the foyer beyond and he gave Jean a polite kiss on the cheek as John said, "Paul, this is Jean's friend, Scott Summers.  Scott, this is my son-in-law, Paul Bailey."

Scott shook the hand of the other man, as tall as Jean's father, but wider both in chest and girth.  He, too, wore casual clothes.  "Pleased to meet you," Paul said.  He seemed more reserved, if not specifically unfriendly.  "Sarah's in the kitchen with Mom."  

"Mom's cooking?" Jean asked.  

"Oh, yeah.  Any excuse," but it wasn't meant viciously -- Scott didn't think -- and the other man ambled away back down the hall into the bowels of the house.  Scott glanced at Jean.  

One of my mother's hobbies, she explained.  Gourmet cooking.  She and my sister took some classes; it's the current rage, I think.  Another thing I'm afraid I'm not up on.  Mom says the only way I can cook is over a Bunsen burner.  

Scott smiled at that because it was true, even while -- now -- it wasn't.  

John watched them, hands on hips, perhaps sensing, instinctually, that he was missing something.  "Sorry, Daddy," Jean said, looping her arm through his and drawing him off into a formal living room; Scott trailed, tugging off his tie as he went (and glad to be rid of it).  "I was explaining to Scott about Mom's cooking."  

"Ah," he replied.  "Isn't there some telepathic etiquette about talking behind backs?" he asked -- a teasing admonishment, yet it surprised Scott to hear him speak with such blasé acceptance.  Then again, from what Jean had said, her parents had accepted her abilities with remarkably little difficulty, perhaps because her outward appearance hadn't changed, or perhaps because it was just one more thing to make their second daughter special and they'd already come to think of her so.  Scott's parents may not have rejected him for being a mutant, but it had been clear, on his Thanksgiving visit, that they hadn't been sure what to make of his mutation -- whether they should talk about it openly or politely pretend that nothing had changed.  

Now, Jean slapped at her father playfully.  "It wasn't anything secret.  I was just telling him what the rest of us know."  

They didn't stop in the living room, but continued on to a den beyond, or maybe a sunroom.  It was full of long windows along one wall that overlooked the rear lawn with its sculpted flower beds and pool.  Jean's brother-in-law was already there, along with two young children who were playing with little plastic dinosaurs on the carpet before the fireplace.  When they saw Jean, both hopped up to give her a more enthusiastic hug than their father had.  "Auntie Jean!  Come play, come play!"  They handed her two of the dinosaurs as if expecting her to join in.  

And she did -- with an enthusiasm that startled Scott, though neither her father nor Paul seemed to find it surprising that Jean had doffed all her reserve to get down on her belly with the kids on the rug (despite her nice pantsuit), making her dinosaurs talk in high-pitched voices as she pretended her 'meat eaters' were chasing Joey's 'plant eaters.'  It was a side of Jean that Scott had neither seen nor expected, yet the kids so obviously adored her -- no judgments -- that she came alive for them the same way she'd come alive for him, once he'd gotten to know her.  Love her and she bloomed.  You should've gone into pediatrics, he sent.  

Second choice, Jean replied.  Or really, third.  I'd probably have done internal med if not genetics.  Kids are okay but their parents can be hell.  

"So, what are you doing this summer?" dragged Scott's attention back from Jean.  The brother-in-law had asked him a question.  

"The school has kids all year, so we run a summer camp for them.  It keeps me busy."  

"They're all mutants?"

It wasn't rude or condemnatory, but rather the kind of question one poses when fishing for something to say, only half-interested and a little awkward.  When Scott answered in the affirmative, he went on, "How many students do you have?"

"Thirteen enrolled now, and three -- no four -- scheduled to arrive new in the fall."  

"And you teach math?"  There was just an edge to it, but more of disbelief than disapproval, as if Paul Bailey couldn't imagine why anyone would want such a job.  Then again, it wouldn't have been Scott's first choice, either.  

"Math and physics," he said.  "Hank -- Henry McCoy -- will be teaching chemistry and biology, and computers, and the professor will teach English, history and general humanities."  

"Charles and I collaborated on the history a bit," John said, then, "Can I get you a drink, Scott?"  He pointed to the sidebar.  "Or there's beer in the fridge."  

"I'll take a little vodka, Dad," Paul said as John rose to fix drinks, and Scott, unsure, glanced at Jean.  She sent, It's perfectly fine to opt for a beer, hon.  So Scott opted for a beer -- he didn't much care for hard drinks -- and the conversation passed into a discussion of the Bailey law firm while Scott listened (all he knew about lawyers were bad jokes), and Jean played with the children on the floor.  The voices of women floated in from the kitchen and late afternoon sun fell golden through the wide windows, making the velvet curtains glow.  Scott wished he knew what color they were.  At one point, as if as a polite afterthought, Paul turned to ask Scott if there were any lawyers in his family.  

"Not that I'm aware of."  

"Your father's in business, then?"

Jean had rolled onto her side to look up even as Scott said, "No.  He's retired air force, actually.  Lieutenant colonel."

"Oh, really?  I got to see Harvard play them last year."

It took Scott three breaths to make the connection from the service itself to the Air Force Academy and football, then he said, "He didn't go to Colorado.  He got a field commission in Vietnam and they put him through school so he could fly the Blackbird -- the SR-71 -- during the Cold War."

The room came to a full stop until John Grey deftly changed the subject even as Jean's sister stepped in to call them to dinner.  The shuffle of movement gave Jean an opportunity to take Scott's hand, her fore- and middle fingers hooking through his last two.  Tension buzzed in him.  Just be yourself, she sent as they passed through the kitchen door into the domain of Elaine Grey.  

As irritated and insecure as Elaine could make her feel, Jean also knew that -- deep down -- her mother loved her.  It had been Elaine who'd fought to see that her comatose daughter had been given the best of care, and it had been Elaine who'd pushed John until he'd exhausted all avenues, and thus had stumbled over one Dr. Charles F. Xavier.  She was a mother tigress, and if Jean hated her, she also adored her, envied her, and wished she had the same fortitude.  And it was in small things -- such as a whole day spent cooking -- that Jean was reminded how Elaine cared.  Like Scott, the measure of Elaine's affection showed better in what she did than in what she said.  Now, Jean hugged her, conflicts momentarily forgotten in the cotton coziness of a child's love for her mother, then she pulled away, turning to Scott.  Caution and wariness had stitched his mouth tight.  If Elaine was a tigress, Scott was a lion.  "You remember Scott," Jean said.  

"Yes," Elaine said non-committally.  

Scott inclined his head, polite but still watchful.  "Thanks for having me."  

"Jean insisted."  

Jean rolled her eyes.  It wasn't a slap, not really, but the words made it clear that he was there on sufferance and Jean's nostalgic affection twisted instantly into irritation.  "Come on," she said, dragging Scott off to the great walnut dining table before worse could occur.  

Dinner extravagance showed in the cuisine, not the cutlery, for which Scott was grateful.  Elaine served watercress salad first, then perfectly braised lamb, new potatoes, and asparagus in a peanut sauce, all followed by baked Brie and a British pudding of cream and sugared violets.  Conversation meandered, turning first to Jean's upcoming ER rotation.  "Isn't there a way to substitute something else?  It's not as if you'll actually be doing emergency medicine," Sarah said.  

"Every doctor could, at some point, wind up doing some emergency medicine," Jean told her sister, "even if not formally.  It's a bad rotation to skip."  

"That's true," John agreed, "but we don't want you to push yourself."  No one brought up the events of March specifically; implication was enough.  

"I'll be fine, Daddy," Jean said in reply.  

The twins had finished eating and now fled the table (and the adults) as conversation veered towards Bard's search for a new dean in the Division of Social Studies.  John Grey was the leading candidate, but as always when an internal nomination had been put forth, issues of fairness had to be addressed, and the final appointment was still hanging.  The Greys, Scott learned, were an old academic family and could boast one college president, one head of surgery at a teaching hospital, and now John, department head and probable new dean.  This both intrigued and intimidated him, as he was the first in his family to attempt a graduate degree.  Yet academia had permeable boundaries, and quickness of wit meant much.  From Jean's perspective, Scott had little to worry about.  

It was, in fact, John Grey who first brought up the issue of Scott's continuing education.  Perhaps Jean should have expected that, but it caught her by surprise nonetheless.  Beyond Paul's awkward attempts to be polite in the den, her family had mostly ignored Scott, Elaine by design and the others because he kept quiet.  Now, her father turned directly to him and asked what plans he had to finish graduate school.  

Startled, Scott pulled in his chin.  "Well, I need at least a year for the application process," he said.  John merely nodded and speared potatoes, waiting for Scott to continue, and encouraged, he launched into details, growing increasing animated.  "My research field is Mayan technology and warfare.  Fred -- the guy I was studying under at Berkeley -- was a student of John Farmer, who organized the Xochicalco Mapping Project.  He got a National Geographic award for it last year, but it's in central Mexico -- which isn't Mayan.  John would probably take me for Fred's sake if I could get accepted, and Mark Waters is in the same department.  He's doing digs at Tikal -- which is Mayan -- so it might be a good choice, plus I'd have an in."  

John was nodding as Scott spoke and Jean knew Scott had made points for his enthusiasm and his knowledge of the field.  "Where are Farmer and Waters, Scott?"

"Oh, sorry -- Penn State."  

John coughed, pretending that a bite of potato had gone down the wrong way.  Paul was less polite, rolling his eyes openly, but Scott didn't seem to notice, caught up in his subject and hoping to impress John by judicious academic name-dropping.  Alas, the names that registered around the table were all the wrong ones.  

"I don't want to go far from New York if I can avoid it," Scott was saying, "but if Linda Schele were still alive, it'd be worth heading to Austin --"

"Austin, Texas?" Sarah interrupted and Jean winced even as Scott nodded, cheerfully oblivious.  

"That's right -- UT, Austin.  Schele was, like, the mother of Mayan archaeology.  She did more for the field than anybody else this century.  She wrote Blood of Kings and a half dozen other things.  Now Donald Frye is at SMU, down in Dallas, and he worked with her some.  I seriously considered going there, but people closer to the northeast could direct my thesis just as easily."  

"I should think so.  Texas!" Sarah blurted.  

Scott frowned, both puzzled and annoyed by the derision in Sarah's voice, and Jean glanced frantically at her father.  John understood.  As a scholar, he was well aware that leading research in a field wasn't always to be found at ivy league schools, yet John also knew the value of the name on the pigskin and wasn't inclined to encourage Scott towards either Texas or the wilds of central Pennsylvania.  "So what other schools are you considering up here -- besides Penn State?"

"Well, Jeremy Conroy and Toni Farley are at U-Penn," Scott said.  John nodded in approval but Scott dismissed them both with, "Unfortunately, they're more interested in settlement patterns, so U-Penn isn't high on my list.  Then there's Ken Follett at Buffalo and that's a possibility, but he's only an assistant prof -- no tenure, and I'm not getting into that boat again."  

John Grey had turned slightly pale at the mention of Buffalo, even as Scott barreled on, "Albany'd be better," which only deepened John's expression of alarm.  "There's a whole little cadre of Mesoamericanists up there, including a student of Schele's --"

"What about other schools?" Elaine interrupted, having taken in the clash of academic priorities with predatory, lynx-like amusement.  "Say -- Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown?"  The seven crown jewels of the northeast.  "Surely any of those would be better choices."  

"Not necessarily," Scott said, a bit testily.  "Martha Myrer's at Yale, but she's in art history, and for Mesoamerica, Brown, Dartmouth and Princeton aren't even on the radar" -- which brought startled glances from the rest, to hear schools founded in the 1700s rejected so cavalierly.  "Now, Bill Fash's at Harvard and he's got a dig in Copán" -- Elaine's eyes hooded as if to say, That's better, until Scott added -- "but it's not like I'll ever get into Harvard."  

"Why not?" Paul asked with a banal presumption.  "I went there.  It's sure as hell better than Penn State, or Albany.  Good Lord.  Your poor parents would never live it down if you got a graduate degree from a state university."  

Scott's mouth dropped open a little, foolish with surprise and sudden comprehension.  Then both shame and anger scalded his ears, and Jean could read all too well what he was thinking -- that his parents had never gone to a private school, and the only way he'd afforded Berkeley had been through a scholarship and Xavier's generosity.  The class divide yawned, creating a chasm between her family's expectations and Scott's own prospects, and beneath the table, Jean slipped her hand onto his thigh squeezing.  "Scott could get into Harvard if he wanted to," she said with quiet certainty, garnering a startled look from him.  Undaunted, she played her Ace of Academic Spades:  "He got a 760 in the quantitative and a 780 in the logic on his GREs."  

That shut up the rest of the dinner table.  Scott was blushing; he knew his scores were good but was unaware -- having little for comparison -- just how good.  John Grey had almost dropped his fork.  "A 760 and a 780?  Good God, what were your verbals?"

"620," Scott replied.  

It was a solid if unremarkable score, and John nodded.  "Not bad, and math majors usually ace the quantitative part of GREs -- but your logic score . . ."  He trailed off and shook his head.  "That's a rare feat."  

"Thanks," Scott said, softly.  

"So," John continued, "Tell me a little more about your research interests."  And Jean knew that Scott had leapt whatever bar her father had set in his own mind, at least for now.  Elaine appeared displeased, Sarah appeared nonplussed, but at least Paul refrained from further digs.  Scott promptly lumbered off into a detailed explanation of Teotihuacan warfare and it's probable influence on the Maya, which bored everyone but John.  Even Jean had heard it all before (about twenty times).  After the dessert, the two men departed the dining room, still discussing Mesoamerican technology, and Jean was left to field the disapproval of the rest.  

Her mother wasted no time.  "I hope you get over this tawdry little fascination with slumming quickly.  Warren Worthington won't wait forever while you wise up."  And she rose from the table, taking a couple of dishes back into the kitchen.  

Sarah and Paul had turned to gape at Jean.  "Warren Worthington!" Sarah said even as Paul asked, "He's interested?  My God, what a catch, Jeannie!"

Jean rolled her eyes, both for Scott's sake and Warren's.  "Warren's not a fish, Paul.  He's a person.  And a friend -- but that's all.  I was never dating him."  

"So Mom's exaggerating again?" Sarah asked as she picked up her own plate and the twins' as well.  

It would no doubt have been easier had Jean simply agreed, yet pride interfered.  Sarah could never resist underscoring any failing in Jean because she'd been unfavorably compared once too often, and Jean, in turn, resented the constant attempts to humiliate her.  So now, she said, "No, Warren was interested.  But I wasn't.  I made my choice; he's talking to Daddy in the library."  

Sarah glared back a moment, then shook her head as Paul rose (but without picking up any dishes) and headed out to keep an eye on the twins.  "He seems like a nice enough chap," Paul said, pausing in the doorway, "but, well, I don't think he'll really fit in, Jean."  

"Fit in with what?" Jean snapped back.  

Paul didn't bother to reply but Sarah pursed her lips as she circled the table, picking up plates and stacking them.  "Don't be dense," she said when her husband had left them.  "Can you imagine him at a Patrons' Society party?  Or New Years up at Montgomery Place?  You don't want to embarrass Mom and Dad, do you?"

"It's myself I don't want to embarrass," Jean replied, watching Sarah.  "It's myself I have to look in the eye in the mirror.  I'm tired of lying just to make Mom happy."

Her sister breathed out, exasperated.  "You always were the selfish one."  

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Everything in this house has to revolve around you -- the drama of Jean Elizabeth!  Me, me, me -- that's all you think about."  

"It is not!"

"Yes, it is!  'It's me I have to look in the eye in the mirror . . .'  Oh, please!  You just want an excuse, and you don't give a damn if your antics with that ditzy pretty boy make Mom and Dad a laughing stock.  Why don't you try thinking of someone else for a change?"  She stalked out, leaving her sister in the empty, echoing dining room as shadows lengthened on a summer evening.  Jean stared at the hardening remains of her birthday pudding and let the tears slide unchecked down either side of her nose, stinging her conscience.  

"It's not true."  

She jerked her head around to peer into the hallway leading back towards the front of the house.  Scott emerged from the shadows.  His hands were in his pockets and he was trying to look casual, as if he hadn't been spying, but there was a muscle jumping in his jaw.  He grew quiet when deeply angry, and his soft rage spilled now into the corners of the room, stiff like the cream.  "You're no more selfish than anybody else," he said as he strolled over to where she still sat.  His voice was low.  "Don't buy into the shit she's handing you, Jean."  

But she's right, Jean sent, I wasn't thinking about them.  

"So?" Scott asked, "They aren't thinking about you, either.  Don't let them dictate your life."  And that, Jean thought, was the voice of the boy who'd gone to Berkeley in the face of his father's disapproval.  He'd always been stronger than her that way.  Reaching down, he tilted her face up and used his thumb to wipe away the tears, then sucked at the dampness as if he could ingest her sorrow and transform it.  "You're the one who told me, 'We'll show them all we're not a mistake,' remember?"  She nodded, but thought back to his uncertainty when they'd first arrived; this was quite the change.  Yet Scott responded to open opposition by pushing back, and her family would have intimidated him better if they'd kept quiet and let his own insecurities undermine him.  

He'd bent to rest his hands on the back of her chair, pinning her between.  Drawing breath, he hesitated, then spoke as if telling a tremendous secret:  "I love you."  

Startled, she laughed and it drew an answering smile from him, mischievous and dimpled.  Just Jean.  Just Scott.  Just this thing they had where he could make her smile, make her believe, and she could make him dare, make him persevere.  In the end, everything else fell away as rather irrelevant, really, lost in the shadows outside the magnesium spotlight on the stage of their affection.  This was their play and they'd finish it.
 

"So how did it go?"

"You mean aside from the fact that I want to strangle her mother, draw and quarter her sister, and flush the brother-in-law down a toilet?  I guess it went fine."  

"Ah."  Ororo seated herself beside Scott in the shade of a tree, where they could keep a watchful eye on the kids, but the wilting heat of early August acted as a better deterrent than two sets of adult eyes.  No one had much energy, and even Scott, usually immune to the sun's hammer, wasn't immune to choking humidity.  He'd taken off his shirt and wadded it up beside him; Ororo glanced at it with amusement.  "You will give the girls a heart attack," she said.  

"Huh?"

Leaning forward, she plucked up the discarded shirt, shaking it in front of his nose.  He shrugged with studied disconcern, but his lips twitched.  "You could take yours off, too," he said, "then the boys could have a heart attack."  

Jaw dropping, she smacked him with the shirt.  "Pig!"

Arms up to fend her off, he laughed, but was also secretly relieved to have her back on speaking terms with him, even if he had to yell 'uncle' twice before she quit abusing him.  He leaned back on his elbows then.  A blue jay was chattering above, and sunlight fell through the leaves onto the grass in a polka dot pattern of light and shadow.  Gnats buzzed, annoying, and Rusty was challenging Julio to hit him with a water balloon.  Scott and Ro sat in a companionable quiet.  "So are you ready to become the math teacher, in the fall?" she asked at last.  

"I thought I already was the math teacher?"

"Officially."  

"I suppose."  

"I am thinking that, perhaps, I shall take an education degree, too."  

Scott glanced at the back of her head, which was all he could see from his angle.  "What would you want to teach?"

"History, I am thinking."  

Scott nodded.  "We could use that," he said.
 
 

 

A light sleeper, Scott woke when the bed rocked.  Jean was getting up, and he'd anticipated this; tomorrow was her first day back in the ER.  He heard the soft crack of a door opening, but it came from the direction of the veranda, not the hall.  Rolling onto his back, he reached for the night-stand and his glasses there, then pulled off the flax blindfold he slept in now (because it was more comfortable than goggles).  Glasses in place, he raised up on his elbows.  She was outside, wrapped in thin silk and silhouetted by house lights through the paneled glass doors.  "Damn," he whispered, glancing at the clock -- a few minutes past one in the morning -- and he wondered how long she'd lain awake before rising.  Throwing off the covers, he got up to pad after her.  She jumped when the French doors opened.  "I didn't mean to wake you," she said.  

"I know.  But I wish you had."  

She shrugged in reply and he slipped his arms around her waist from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder.  "I'll be fine," she said, her voice brittle with irritation.  

"I'm sure you will."  But he didn't let her go and she snorted at him.  Then a moment later, she gasped when his palm drifted up to rub one nipple.  

"You think that's going to distract me?"

"I don't know.  Is it?"  His other hand had found the other nipple and he felt her press back against him almost instinctually.  

"Men think sex is the answer to everything."  

"It's not?"

Laughing, a little breathless, she was pressing her ass into his crotch now and he rubbed against her, the hour and his exhaustion transforming his worry into lust.  Twisting in his arms, she kissed him and reached up to remove his glasses as he turned his head aside.  Then she sucked at his jawline, his neck.  The night air was cool in contrast to her body and he could hear the wet sounds her mouth made on his skin as her tongue slid over his bare chest, flicking against flat nipples.  He hissed, putting out a hand blindly for something to rest his weight against.  The glass door, it felt like, but sensation had all concentrated in his crotch, heavy and pulsing.  Voice hoarse, he said, "Let's go back in."  She disengaged and took his hand.  "Can I have my glasses back?" he asked.  

"No," she replied.  

"Jean . . ."  

But she only dragged him through the room and shoved him down lightly on their bed, kissing his face again.  He nearly yelled when he felt her lips cross his eyelashes.  "Don't do that!"  He went weak all through from anxiety, his desire drowned.  "Dammit, don't do that."  

"Shhh," she said and pulled him towards her, pushing his face into her shoulder.  

"Please --"

"Shhh," she said again, then, "Kiss me."  

He wasn't sure what this was about, what game she was playing, but he got hold of his own fears and did as she asked.  "Why are you doing this?" he asked between kisses.  

"Because I like the feel of your bare face."  Then she slipped free to lie back on the bed, thighs spread as she maneuvered him between.  The insistent bulge of his erection pressed into the damp heat of her crotch and the smell of sex was making him crazy.  He rocked against her.  

"What'd you do with my glasses?"

"I'm not telling."  

"Jean!"

"Shhh."  

This was her particular fetish, to see him without the glasses.  A part of him understood it, despite his anxieties.  She was curious.  But just now, she was pulling his head to her breast and after a moment's hesitation, he obliged, mouthing her nipples, drunk on wanting.  There was a rawness to this, without anything in the way, a freedom, and he could almost pretend he was a normal man.  

For Jean, it was all about the crisp flavor of danger, the awesome power she held in her arms, proving she wasn't a coward.  But even more, it was about trust.  She needed to know that he trusted her to trust him.  Complicated.  Yet trust was important because so few offered it to a telepath.  Scott always had -- in everything but this.  He'd trusted her enough to live with a permanent link in his head, but he hadn't trusted his bare face against her chest, and for some reason, that last resistance had bothered her.  

Now, he raised himself up on his arms so that he could reach her breast more easily, and it was less the sensation of his tongue circling her areola that excited her than the feel of his nose and brows pressed into her skin -- and what that meant.  No metal, no quartz.  Only his eyelids.  After a moment, he moved his head sideways, intending to give some attention to the other breast, but she stopped him, holding his face against her sternum, his nose right over her heart.  His muscles tensed, then abruptly relaxed and he sank against her, letting her embrace him as her fingers slipped through his hair.  They lay that way until her breathing evened out in sleep, then he rolled onto his back with a sigh.  He was still hard, and eyes shut, he slipped a hand under the waistband of his briefs to grip himself and finish.  She needed to rest.  He bit his lips when he came so he wouldn't wake her.
 
 
 

The new year began with nineteen students rather than seventeen, and Xavier's finally felt like a proper school, having shed the awkwardness of numbers too large for intimacy, but too small for momentum, and for the first time, classes were broken down into grades.  Three full-time teachers were listed on the brochure, plus Ororo, who continued her studies at a local private college and acted as their part-time "assistant."  Occasionally Warren turned up to lead a particular class, but he and Scott kept their distance, edging around each other like dogs who preferred the peace of a good fence.  Warren was more friendly with Jean, who politely pretended that she didn't know about his public quarrel with Scott in the dining hall, back in March.  Almost half a year had passed in any case, and the new students took her affair with their math teacher as a fixed article of mansion life, while the older students had stopped gossiping finally sometime in late July.  Scott and Jean had passed, almost overnight, from the subject of titillating speculation into a boring old couple.  The fact that they'd been friends for such a long time (and had the privacy of their own room for intimate trysts) infused their public interaction with a platonic familiarity that discouraged prurient interest.  Not that Jean was around the mansion much during the day, in any case, with her current rotation in the ER -- and there were several nights a week that she wasn't around, too.  Scott discovered that he really didn't like sleeping alone, now that he'd gotten used to another body next to his.  

At least this time her rotation passed more calmly than the first, perhaps because it came at the end of her first year and she'd learned confidence, or perhaps because the rest of her life had settled into routine.

That changed in September.
 
 
 

Scott dropped by his office to pick up some papers before his first class only to find his phone ringing off the hook.  Shoving the door open, he grabbed for it.  "This is Scott Summers."  

"Why is no one answering the phones?"  It was Francesco, sounding both annoyed and panicked.  

"I don't know," Scott said.  "Breakfast just ended and everybody's headed to class.  You caught me by chance.  What is it?"

"Warren is not answering his phone, either, not at his flat nor his cell phone, and his secretary -- which he at least has -- says he is not at the office yet."  

Scott ignored the secretary remark.  "What do you need with Warren?"  And what did he need with Warren that meant he'd call the mansion as a second resort?  

"He must stay home today."  

Scott glanced at his watch:  eight-oh-seven.  "I think it's a little late for that, Frank."  

"Tell him to go home!  Call him and tell him to go home!  It is easier for you there than for me.  Tell him to go home!"

Grabbing a chair, Scott sat down.  He knew that tone.  "What'd you see?"

"Only flashes.  There is no time to talk.  Find him.  Tell him he must go home."  

Annoyed with the crystal-ball babbling, Scott nearly shouted, "WHAT flashes?"

"A red sky.  Sirens.  A woman covered in ash with a broken heel, walking down a street.  A great cloud of gray smoke turning over cars.  Fires.  Pieces of a plane stretched across a field.  A tall building falling, but what building, I cannot say.  And American flags everywhere.  How much use is that?  Now do not waste time -- find Warren and tell him to go home.  Something is going to happen."  He hung up.

Scott stared at the humming receiver, then disconnected and dialed Warren's cell phone.  Perhaps he'd just had it off when Frank had tried earlier, because he answered now.  "Worthington."  

"It's Scott.  Frank called here.  He says you need to go home.  Something's going to happen."  

"My, that's . . . informative.  I don't suppose you could be a little more vague, could you?"

Scott ground his teeth.  "You know how Frank's visions work.  Where are you?"

"In the hallway outside my office door, actually."  And he lowered his voice because there were others in the hall, too.  "Look, Scott, I have two important conference calls today.  I can't just take off because Frank has some premonition of disaster that has nothing to do with me."  

"It has everything to do with you -- he tried calling you first, and only called here because he couldn't catch you.  It's you he's worried about."  Maybe Frank hadn't been able to see specifics, but he'd certainly been focused on Warren.  "Get out of Battery Park.  Go home and do your calls from there."  

Warren pondered that while people passed, hurrying to a meeting, an interview, an office.  He had faith in few things, but Frank Placido was one of them.  "All right, fine, but I need to pick up some papers and documents.  I'll call you when I get home."  

"Don't call me; call Frank.  I'll talk to you later."  

When Summers had hung up, Warren folded his phone and slipped it into his pocket, then entered his suite.  These weren't the main offices of Worthington Enterprises by any means; they occupied only half the fifty-first floor of World Trade Center One.  But Warren's father had decided a branch at the center of New York's financial heartbeat would be convenient, and had put his son in charge of it under the watchful eye of one of his senior staff, Alan Hodge.  Riding with training wheels, Warren had called it.  

Fortunately, Hodge wasn't there yet; he wouldn't arrive until nine or ten, and Warren's receptionist approached to hand him a good dozen pink message slips.  He glanced through them.  Half were from Italy, and that, more than Scott's call, decided him firmly.  Heading into his office, he grabbed his current files and shoved them into his briefcase, then walked back out.  "Ladies and gentlemen," he called, getting their startled attention.  "We're going to breakfast -- my treat."  

His staff stared, obviously wondering what had prompted this beneficence, but the rich were allowed their little eccentricities and Warren was relying on that to cover his real reasons.  He figured that whatever had made it dangerous for him to be downtown made it just as dangerous for them.  "Come on," he said, clapping his hands, "find a stopping place."  Even so, it took fifteen minutes to herd them out and down the hall to the elevators, which were all in use.  

Now that he'd committed himself, Warren wanted out of the building as quickly as possible, and might have suggested the stairs, but even Frank's warnings couldn't overcome the ridiculousness of taking fifty flights, so he waited with his staff, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet.  The harness that constrained his wings chafed more than usual today.  "Why breakfast?" one of the clerks asked.  Tom Vincent.

"It's a nice day," Warren replied, because he had nothing better.  "And I don't know -- it's Tuesday?"  He grinned.  "I didn't get any breakfast this morning."  

A few of the secretaries shook their heads, but smiled.  Warren doubted they minded a morning off, but he hoped Alan Hodge didn't show up to an empty office, or he'd have some explaining to do.  He glanced at his watch.  Eight thirty-nine.  Maybe this'd be a day that Hodge arrived at ten.  "This better not be a joke, Frank," Warren muttered under his breath.  But Francesco never joked about visions.  

The elevators were slow to arrive and one had just opened when the entire building surged suddenly under their feet, knocking them into walls or to the floor.  "What the hell was that!" someone shouted -- Tom Vincent again.  

"I don't know!" Warren said.  "Stay here!"  And he raced for the nearest office, threw open the door, and nearly collided with a frantic woman running out.  "What's going on?"

"I don't know!  Something hit the top of the tower!"

Warren glanced out a window.  He could see glass, a blizzard of papers, and large metal pieces raining down.  Slamming the door, he ran back towards his people.  They had white faces, and Peggy, his receptionist, seemed on the verge of a panic.  "Get to the stairs.  Go!"  Warren pushed them in front of him.  All the offices were emptying now, creating a mass exodus of frightened people, and a backup outside the stairwell.  Strangely, no one pushed or shoved.  Someone was sobbing.  More speculated -- a gas explosion?  A helicopter clipping the roof?  Another bombing like the one in '93?  No one seemed to know.  

The stairwell was narrow, and only two people could go down abreast.  A design flaw, Warren thought, lips twisting at the irony of noticing that now.  People jostled him and he could smell sweat from nerves.  The lower they went, the hotter it got from so many bodies crammed into such a small space, and sometimes the human traffic flow simply stopped.  Still, no one panicked until water started pouring down the stairs from above; fortunately, the sardine-tin packing kept anyone from doing anything truly foolish, and the majority kept a cool head.  Warren could hear Vincent and the reigning office matriarch, Lorraine Harris, talking calmly to the people around them.  Warren had always hated Lorraine for her snippiness and hauteur, but he loved her now.  She was keeping Peggy from going to pieces.  "We're at the thirtieth floor; not much further!"  Her voice was loud over the rushing water.  

Smoke was seeping into the well in addition to the water, and at the twenty-seventh floor, the traffic flow stopped again as people were jostled and firemen starting racing up.  Their faces were haunted and they were panting.  When people demanded to know what had happened, they didn't reply, just told them to keep moving down and evacuate the building.  Despite even less space, movement picked up.
 
 
 

Ever since Frank's morning call, Scott had been unsettled, the hair a bit raised at the back of his neck, so when he heard feet patter down the hall outside his class and Ororo's voice shouting, he broke off instantly and ran to open the door.  "What?"

"The World Trade Center's been hit!" she replied over her shoulder as she yanked open the door to the professor's office across the hall.  "The World Trade Center's been hit by an airplane!"

Scott sprinted for the den and turned on the television where a Channel 4 news bulletin was announcing the collision.  It sounded as if it had been an accident.  Then the picture came in, showing one of the twin towers burning -- the north tower.  Warren's tower.  "Fuck!" Scott shouted, not caring that kids were arriving in the den behind him.  He dropped down on a couch so that others could see.  

"What happened?  What's going on?  Did a plane really hit the tower?" the kids were chattering, torn between morbid excitement and simple confusion.  

"Be quiet and listen!" Hank snapped, joining Scott on the couch; it rocked under his weight.  The news was giving the time of the collision as 8:45 -- about half an hour after Scott had talked to Warren.  "What floor is Warren's?" Hank asked, his voice hollow and soft.  

"Fifty-first," Scott replied, then leapt to his feet and headed for a phone, but the lines were all busy.  He tried over and over, every few minutes, until behind him, Jubilee and Doug both screamed.  Whipping his head about, he watched live feed of a second plane hitting the south tower.  Time froze, and his breath with it.  Then there was a burst of flame, and smoke and debris shot out, fascinating like fireworks, and as terrible as Judgment Day.  

"Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" and "Oh, shit, oh, Jesus!" came from the kids, along with other exclamations rather less articulate.  Rendered mute, Scott just dropped the receiver.
 
 
 

It still took thirty-five minutes for Warren and the other evacuees to get to ground level.  The upper lobby was filled with rescue workers.  "Out, out, out!" they were saying, practically shoving people through the doors that led to the bridge across to the World Financial Center on the other side of West Side Highway.  Freed now from the stairwell, people finally began to grasp the full magnitude of what had occurred.  Windows were blown out of their steel frames and the lobby was partially charred.  A couple of the elevator doors had been blasted open, apparently from the force of its car coming down, and all Warren could think was that they'd almost gotten on one.  He began to shake.  Outside, they could see glass still raining down like hail, and paper was everywhere, along with concrete rubble and bits of twisted metal.  A lot of rubble and metal.  

And bodies.  There were bodies, or what was left of them after falling so far, some charred.  Warren gagged, and tried not to look.  People around him were sobbing in fear, relief, horror -- a rich cocktail of emotion -- while other faces showed no expression at all.  There was no expression for this.  Some people walked in circles, some ran, aimless.  Many were yelling for friends or people they knew, or had a phone to their ears.  Warren pulled out his own cell and opened it, but never dialed.  He followed the flood across the street, just one more person headed for the esplanade along the Hudson River, and it suddenly didn't matter who he was or how much money he had.  It mattered that he was still moving, still alive, and not a body on the pavement.  His skin stung but it was only much later that he learned he'd been pelted by bits of glass and concrete that had scratched his face and hands.  There was smoke on his suit and his soaked shoes made squishing sounds as he walked.  

Pausing finally, he looked behind him.  Both towers were on fire, the smoke roiling out gray and black into a quartz-blue sky.  Tower One, the north, had a gaping hole near the top and Tower Two, the south, had one more toward the middle.  He stood stock still, staring, as people ran past.  That was when he saw someone leap from a window above the hole in Tower Two, wingless but arms outstretched, her hair and skirt whipping behind her.  The sight of it knocked him to his knees, and inside the cage across his back, his own wings fluttered.  Useless.  He bowed over and banged his forehead on the sidewalk.
 


 

The first reports came over the dispatch at the main desk of the ER.  They were confusing, but news traveled fast, and as more reports came in, Columbia Presbyterian prepared for Disaster Response along with every other hospital in Manhattan.  

But the rush of ambulances never came.  Doctors and nurses stood about with nothing to do.  Some people did trickle in off the street, and a few more in an ambulance here or there, but not enough, not enough.  Like everyone else in the ER, Jean knew that a lack of casualties meant a higher death toll.  So she waited with the rest, and never noticed when her shift should have ended at ten.  No one thought of leaving.  At one point, she became dimly aware of the professor's mind-touch in her head, not interfering, merely ascertaining that she was there, and safe.  

Early on in the first hour, a few nurses and doctors glanced at her nervously.  They'd heard stories of the previous March.  But she didn't waver as she moved up and down the hall, tending the few who'd made it this far -- mostly for cuts and bruises and smoke inhalation -- and as time passed, the staff ceased to think about it.  There were too many other things to think about, and faces were sketched with concern.  Jean caught bright flashes of worry and a hushed litany of names:  family and friends.  (And what of Warren, what of Warren?)  Once in a spare moment, she tried to call Scott at the mansion, but couldn't get through.  Yet he was in Westchester.  North.  That was safe, wasn't it?  (And what of Warren?)

Jean went back to her duty.

The mansion phone lines had been busy almost since the second tower had been hit as students had called parents or parents had called students, when they could get through the clogged relays; Hank had even brought in his laptop to offer email as an option, slow as that was.  Scott's maternal grandmother had phoned, wanting to know how he was (she lived in Brooklyn) -- and a complete stranger had called, too, a Ham Radio contact of his father's.  Chris Summers had assumed the worst and gone straight for his radio.  Any excuse, Scott thought, amused and exasperated, but he told the man he was fine.  Yet neither Warren nor Jean had made it through, and when he was called to the phone for a third time, Scott nearly leapt for the receiver.  "Hello!"

"Yo, Slim!  You're okay!"   EJ's voice this time.  The relief in it was palpable.  

"I'm fine."  Scott tried to hide his disappointment; he didn't want EJ to think he didn't want to talk to him, but -- right then -- he didn't want to talk to him.  

"I had to call.  I had to check on you."  

"I'm fine," Scott said again, eyes turning back to the TV screen.  He couldn't seem to look away for long, even while he didn't want to see.  "Jean's at the hospital, but she's all right, too, the professor says.  Everyone's all right.  Except for Warren.  We don't know about Warren.  The professor is trying to locate him."  

"The blond angel boy?"

"Yeah.  He had an office in the north tower."  

"Fuck."  EJ paused.  "The news is all over.  Everything's stopped out here.  People are hanging out in front of a TV.  A plane hit the Pentagon and another went down in PA, they're sayin'."  

"I know."  It was dull.  He'd spent all his anger, earlier.  They'd hit the goddamn Pentagon, and he was still military brat enough to feel the outrage.  They were baiting the bull.  Just now, the news was showing loops of the second plane hitting the second tower.  Over and over.  Scott shut his eyes.

If you'd been there, you could have stopped it, he thought to himself.  

EJ was still talking.  "Clarice and DeeDee are over here, and Lee called, and Dad and Mom.  I need to get off and start letting people know you're okay."  

"All right."  

"Call me, or send email, when you know something about your friend."  

"All right."  

EJ paused but didn't hang up, said instead, "Talk to me, man.  You're not all right."  

"Dammit, what do you want me to say?"

"Anything."  

"I could have fucking stopped it!" he shouted, aware that the kids had twisted around to look at him.  "If I'd been there, I could have stopped it!"

"How?"  The question was calm.  

"I could have blown the plane out of the sky!"  Then he thought about how that had sounded.  "It would've killed the people on it, yeah, but it would have saved the tower."  

"There's a long string of 'if's attached to that, Slim."  

"But I could've done it."  

"Your shoulders aren't that big.  Carry what fits on 'em."  

Scott's jaw tightened, but four years of friendship had earned EJ the right to say that.  "All those people are dead."  A pause.  "Warren --"

"Yeah."  The word was much softer.  EJ didn't add to it.  There weren't enough words.  

Scott turned his back on the TV and shut his eyes again, felt heat sting behind them.  He could only cry with his eyes shut, and a reporter droning behind him hid the choked sound from everyone but the man on the other end of the line, almost three thousand miles away.  EJ didn't speak, but he didn't hang up.  After a minute or two of simple silence, Scott said, "I should get off.  In case Warren manages to get through.  Or Jean."  

"Call me later."  It wasn't an offer; it was an order.  

"Okay."  Scott hung up.
 
 
 

He needed sensible shoes.  Just some goddamn sensible shoes.  He'd lost his tie somewhere along the Hudson and his shirt hung half open, though he didn't dare take the jacket off his back.  It'd expose his wings.  Yet what good had they done anyone?  

He thought again of the woman falling.  

He wondered if he would ever fly again.  

Behind him, around him, in front of him, a sea of people moved up Broadway, north out of Egypt, an exodus of suits all looking for their personal promised land.  Most people had been directed west across the Brooklyn Bridge along with others on the Hudson side of downtown, but he'd resisted.  He had to go north; his promised land lay in Westchester.  

Even as his thoughts turned that way, he felt a brush against his mind, as light as his own feathers.  Warren?  

Professor!  

You're all right.  Thank heavens!  

I didn't help them, Warren replied.  It was a non sequitur, but the apology burst out of him like a rain of shattered window glass.  That woman -- she jumped and I didn't catch her.  I should have caught her, but I didn't think about it until I saw her jump.  What good is a man with wings if he doesn't use them?  

Xavier didn't answer immediately and Warren could sense him sifting through Warren's memories to make sense of what he'd said.  Finally, the professor sent, You did not think about it because you were in shock like everyone else.  A man who has wings is still a man, Warren.  

Scott would have thought of it!  

You are not Scott.  

No kidding!  

It wasn't a criticism, son.  Do what you can do as Warren.  And the touch was gone.  

The terrible sound began behind him like the soft rattle of an earthquake, and dull still with shock, Warren paused to glance back.  The south tower of the trade center was collapsing like a house of concrete cards, straight down into a ball of dust and smoke and fire.  Around him, he could hear the sharp sounds of shock, and someone burst out weeping.  Not a woman.  Warren ran a dirty hand into his hair.  Then he continued up Broadway as the dust boiled out of Battery Park behind them and people began to run instead of walk.  Ten or fifteen minutes later, he heard the other tower go down, but he didn't bother to look, just threw away his useless briefcase.  

Ahead of him, he could see an elderly woman with one broken heel; she was covered in dust and wept into her hands as she walked along with a lurching gate from her broken shoe.  

"Hey," he said and caught her up, putting his arm around her.  "Stop a minute."  She did.  He could see now that she wasn't an old woman at all; her pale blond hair had simply been covered by gray ash and there was a long gash on her dirty cheek.  He picked her up.  

"You can't carry me," she whispered.

"Sure, I can."  Nature had given him more than the wings.  He started walking again.  "What's your name?"

"Felicia," she replied.  "Felicia Hardy.  What's yours?"

"Warren."  He didn't give his last name.  On a day like today, it didn't matter.  

Go on to Chapter 21, "Speaking to the Dead"