An Accidental Interception
of Fate:  Slippery, Bright and Stupid
Minisinoo

Later the same morning that Frank had entered Cerebro with nightmares and exited with a prophecy, Scott Summers faced Charles Xavier across the big oak desk in the professor's study.  It was the first of many such meetings, although Scott had no inkling of that yet and the professor but the most general notion based on what Frank had permitted him to see.  As always, their Nostradamus had kept much to himself, relating only necessities, and one of those necessities from Francesco's perspective was the pivotal role of the boy in the big, maroon leather chair across from Xavier.  Yet Frank had advised against telling that to Scott.  "He will lead them," Frank had promised, "but only if he makes that decision himself.  If told to do it, he'll rebel."  Xavier, who knew Scott as well or better than Frank, was inclined to agree.  So now, he had asked Scott into his office to consult him not as the future commander of a mutant peacekeeping force, but as the son of a military officer who had some insight into combat preparation training, however by-proxy it might be.  None of the rest of them had even that much experience.  Xavier had meant only to create a school and sanctuary here -- a defensive proposition -- so he was at a loss as to where to begin.

"We need some kind of basic training, like what police go through, or military cadets," Scott said now, "but I don't think any of us is anywhere near ready for it.  Well, I might be, and Ro, but Frank's physical shape . . ." Scott paused prudently.

"Frank is in very poor physical condition.  You must be honest about these matters, Scott."

"He needs to eat better and seriously cut back on the smoking, and I'm not just saying that because I don't like it.  His wind is terrible.  Warren is okay, but he needs to exercise more; he could probably manage BMT now, but he'd be better off if he started a regular exercise program.  Most recruiters advise that sort of thing when you enlist.  Jean spends all her time in the lab.  I doubt she could even lift her own weight or run half a mile.  Hank's harder to judge, since his mutation is physical and he's naturally more adept and stronger than the rest of us, but he could be in a lot better shape than he is.  All of us could be, and we're going to have to be.  We're going to have to learn to use our powers offensively, too, plus learn how to handle standard weapons."  He stopped, eying Xavier.  "We can't be non-aggressive.  Sir.  Non-violent maybe, but not non-aggressive -- not to do what Frank said we'll have to do." 

He explained this because he knew well Xavier's own feelings about violence.  Despite the professor's upper-class New England background, his mother had been a Quaker, and she had instilled those beliefs in her son:  mediation, non-violent resolution of conflict, and toleration -- even celebration -- of difference.  Scott Summers honored those beliefs, admired them, but he was also a pragmatist.  There were people in the world who understood only force.  If he had issues of his own with 'the military complex,' as he thought of it, he wasn't, and never had been, a pacifist.  It was less a disagreement of ideology than of praxis, and injustice infuriated him, especially when backed up by force of arms.  If he could protect someone weaker than he was by planting himself in front of a bully, he'd gladly do it.

"We will not use lethal force," the professor said now.

"I agree.  But one of the reasons you train is so you don't have to, and we may wind up giving some bruises.  A cop doesn't let a suspect deck him so the guy can run off and mug someone else.  You stop him, whatever it takes.  My dad taught me a long time ago that a soldier carries a gun hoping he'll never have to use it, but he'd better be willing to, and he'd better be a good shot.  It's a weapon, not a toy or a prop.  I could shoot a gun and hit a target by the time I was nine, and clean the gun afterwards.  I've never killed anything in my life, not even a squirrel, but if I had to shoot at someone, I'm good enough to hit what I'm aiming at -- and it wouldn't have to be in the torso, like shooting at the broad side of a barn.  I could take someone down by hitting his thigh.  People who don't know how to handle a gun are more likely to kill you by accident."

Leaning back in his wheelchair, Xavier listened to his first student become, ironically, the teacher.  If he had been raised with Quaker values and doubted that he himself could ever kill another -- even to save his own life -- he did believe that there were times when force was called for.  Moreover, he had seen in Frank's own mind that if they did not create this peacekeeping team, thousands, maybe millions, would die.  Listening now to Scott, he understood, too, why Frank's visions had made Scott pivotal.  He would lead this team as Xavier couldn't -- and not just for the obvious physical reasons.  Scott Summers believed such a team was necessary, but without glorifying it or seeing it as an end in itself.  He would be a soldier when he needed to be, but when the war was over, he'd happily return to a peaceable life.  And if Xavier might, in his heart, have sincere doubts that violence would ever truly end violence, he also realized that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice thousands of lives for the sake of his own ideology.  He was not that detached, especially not when he knew his own 'children' would be among the first to die.  So if he couldn't pull the trigger, he could buy the best gun and be sure it was kept in shape.

Now, turning his chair slightly so that he could reach the blackboard to his right, Xavier picked up chalk.  "All right.  What do you think we need to do first?"

"Make everybody use the gym, do some basic exercise, get enrolled in self-defense classes like karate or something.  We should practice more with our powers, too -- not just to control them, but how to really use them."  Scott wrinkled his nose.  "But unless we go at this full time and sacrifice everything else, it's going to take a while, professor."

More prophetic words could not have come from Frank himself.
 
 
 

"You're kidding us."  Warren said.  

"No, I'm not."  Gathered on squeaky leather couches around the coffee table in the den, Scott Summers faced his fellow students.  Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the big arched windows behind them, overlaying dark wood with a glitter-golden sheen.  Being in the hot seat left Summers uncomfortable, even backed up as he was by both Xavier's authority and Frank's quiet, 'Listen to what he says.'  But he pressed on. 

"Each of us spends half an hour in a gym every day.  We eat more vegetables and less crap, and drink more water instead of coke or coffee.  I'm as bad as anyone about that, I know.  And we all enroll in a martial arts or self-defense class.  I don't care what -- pick something.  Some style of karate, judo . . .whatever."

"Scott, I don't have time -- "

"Make time."  Scott glared at Jean.  Feeling irritable already in general, and spurned by her in particular, he lashed out with, "Look, people, if we're going to do this, we all have to take it seriously.  You can't use your research as an excuse, Jean."  

"Just wait a minute here!  I never asked to join your little mutant police force!  There's more than one way to fight, and I'm not the soldier-type, Scott.  I don't see any reason for all of us to participate.  Let the ones who want to, do so, and the rest of us can do what we do best:  research and educate."

Further irritated because she had a point, but also angry now at having his advice challenged, Scott rose from the couch and stalked off, speaking as he went:  "Fine.  Don't listen to me.  I'm not your drill sergeant.  The professor just wanted me to share my opinion.  Obviously, in your great age and wisdom, you know more about it than I do, so suit yourself."  And he was out the door, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake.

"Who died and appointed him God?" Jean asked, needing to justify herself.  No one replied.

After five beats, Ororo stood and headed out, almost casually, after Scott.  "I think I shall go to the gym.  Would any of you wish to keep me company?"  Frank followed, and Warren, leaving Jean with Henry in the den.

Decidedly not looking after them, Jean reached for the recent issue of National Geographic on the coffee table.  "And just why, all of a sudden, am I Jean the Ogre?" she asked the air.

Sighing, caught between vexation and fondness and a certain pained empathy for Summers, Henry said, "You know what he's really irked about -- and it has nothing to do with research versus exercise.  You need to talk to him about Ted."

"Jesus, Hank!"  She slapped the magazine back down on cherry wood.  "That's why I haven't said anything to him yet!  He's going to react like a four-year-old!"

"Maybe.  Maybe, not.  But you dodging the issue for -- how many weeks now? -- isn't making it easier.  The longer you wait, the more likely he is to react badly."

"I don't want to hurt him."  

"You're hurting him worse by not talking to him."  

"But isn't that a bit arrogant?  To just walk up and say, 'Look, Scott, I know you have this crush on me and . . .'?"

"It's not exactly a government secret.  There's not a person in this mansion who doesn't know how badly he's got it for you."

"But he's never actually said anything to me directly about how he feels, and it's kind of rude of me to just assume it before he does say something."  

"Maybe, under normal circumstances.  But there's a big pink elephant in the room and it's shitting on the carpet."  

Jean laughed; she couldn't help it.  For all his massive intellect, and unlike the rather esoteric Dr. Richards, Hank had no problem with colloquial conversation.

"I think it's worse to avoid the matter and hope it goes away," Hank continued.  "His crush has lasted a year now -- that's not a fleeting thing.  He may be too young for you, but he does feel something powerful."

"Oh, Hank -- mostly he just idolizes me!  Or really, he has two 'Jeans' in his head:  there's the 'Jean-of-his-fantasies' and then there's me, who he talks to on the phone once a week.  Or did." 

"Maybe they're not as separate as you think."  

"But sometimes he acts like I hung the moon and stars!  I'm not that special!"

Hank smacked her shoulder -- lightly.  "Quit that.  I thought you were finally getting past that.  It's your unreasonable expectations for yourself talking.  You are special.  You're smart, you're pretty, and you're . . ."  he paused, thinking, then shrugged and said, "You're nice.  That's not very flowery, maybe, but 'nice' is a good thing to be." 

Jean was blushing.  She'd never learned how to take compliments that weren't concerned with her intellect.  "Thanks." 

"There's plenty about you for someone to like without assuming he's inventing fantasies in his head.  You've got -- " Hank paused, unsure if he should go on, unsure if it might reveal too much about his own feelings that he'd rather she didn't know, but she was watching him expectantly, and Jean had a desperate need to be loved, even while she had difficulty believing that she was lovable.  Hank laid the problem squarely at the feet of that horrible virago she called a mother.  As the adored only child of Edna McCoy, Hank found Elaine Grey to be a caricature of what a mother should be.  So perhaps Jean needed to hear what he had to say, and she had always viewed him as her trusted elder brother -- safe.  "You've got a kind of . . .warmth, coupled with this air of vulnerability.  It attracts people.  Or at least, it attracts men.  Add to that an understated but very classy beauty.  Then -- " he went on, overriding her protest " -- people get to know you and find there's an imp behind the classy face, and a sharp brain that doesn't miss much.  You're full of surprises, Jean, and you're not a hard person to care about."

She was blushing harder, a hand over her mouth as if she just didn't know what to do or say, and he wondered if any of the other men who adored her had any idea how fragile her ego really was.

"Now," he said, "why don't you go talk to Scott before he gets really impossible to live with?"
 
 
 
 

"So you're really not coming back this summer?"

Warren and Scott were sitting on a wooden bench beside the basketball court, a ball between them but relaxed for the moment.  It wasn't an especially warm day for April, but Scott had forgotten how muggy New York could be.  He'd been sweating heavily and smelled like a horse run full-out.  Head back and eyes shut, he tried to soak up enough sun to counteract feelings of withdrawal.  He said, "Nope, I've decided to take classes.  I'll get my degree faster if I go through the summers, too.  The way things are looking, that might matter."  

Warren thought that what really mattered was Scott trying to avoid Jean, but he prudently didn't point that out.  "So when am I supposed to give you piloting lessons?"

"I guess I'll sign up for them out there.  Or something."  

Warren didn't reply, just fanned his wings in frustration.  "Hey," Scott said, still with eyes shut, "keep doing that; it feels good.  I'm hot."  Warren snorted, but complied, and thus it was that Jean found them lounging on the bench, Scott's hair fluttering a little in the breeze of Warren's wings.

When the wingfan stopped abruptly, Scott opened his eyes to see Jean standing in front of him -- expression uneasy -- and he sat up, blinking a bit from the bright light and glad for once that he had shades to conceal it.  She smiled at them both, or grimaced might have been closer, then glanced at Warren.  "War, can I talk to Scott for a bit?"

The request knocked Scott's stomach down somewhere to the vicinity of his ankles.  Given her expression, there was no way this would be either happy or pleasant, and the only consolation he took was that she appeared none too pleased about it herself. 

Vacating the bench with a half-pitying backwards glance, Warren headed off for the mansion, his wings sagging behind him.  Jean took his place and snagged the abandoned basketball, turning it over and over in her hands.  They were pragmatic hands with short nails, lean and strong.  Scott watched her, waiting for her to begin.  Finally, she flung the ball out at the court.  It went further than Scott might have credited, halfway across black asphalt to bounce a few times off into a hedge of boxwood.  "I really have absolutely no idea how to broach this," she said, "in a way that doesn't sound either stupid or presumptuous."

Between the flung ball and her words, much of Scott's anger flowed away, leaving him hollow and tired.  "How about if I make it easier?  You have a boyfriend."

"Maybe.  I'm really not sure.  I've never had a boyfriend before -- well, not like this."  

Her admission surprised him, and he found it easier to focus on the small instead of the big.  "You've never had a boyfriend?"

"No, I haven't.  Well, as I said, not like this.  I wasn't allowed to date in high school.  I told you that."

"Yeah, but -- "

"And in college, down at Vandy, I went to a lot of parties, but the guys I met there weren't exactly boyfriends.  Just your average jerk with a penis who wanted to get his rocks off."  

And Summers blinked, because he'd never, ever heard Jean talk that way.  

"Then, when I went to Columbia, school was ALL and grades were my god.  I had no time to date, and medical school's no better.  So believe it or not, I'm twenty-seven years old and I think I may have my first real boyfriend."  

"But you're not sure."  

"No, I'm not."  

Squinting up at the pellucid blue April sky, Scott considered.  He had two options.  He could throw a fit because she was dating someone else, or he could face the fact that he'd never honestly expected her to date him, and do what friends did:  offer a sympathetic ear.  A combination of the humid heat, his physical exhaustion, and her confidences made him settle on the latter.  After all, and if he were fair, he did ponder the possibilities of Clarice Haight on occasion, and he just didn't have the energy to be angry anymore.  Hurt was a slower thing, like a bruise; it wouldn't show dark and ugly until later.  In the meantime, he used the dim shock of having his suspicions confirmed to allow him to react in a detached manner.  

"Has he asked you out?"

"What?"  Jean must not have expected him to quiz her.  

"Has he asked you out?  I mean, if he's asked you out more than once, especially if it's been three or four times -- and he's not asking out anybody else -- then yeah, I'd say he's your boyfriend, or thinks of himself that way.  I would, if it were me."  And then he winced, because that had come out more personally than he'd actually meant it.  

But she was looking at him with real surprise, and like aloe, it soothed the burn a bit.  "I'm not sure if he's asked me out or not.  I mean, I guess he has.  We've gone to dinner and things.  But mostly, we just . . . find things to do, after we're done in the lab."  

"But you hang out together a lot?  And he's not hanging out with other girls that way?"

"Yes, that's right."  

"Then Jean, I think you have a boyfriend."   He tried to smile at her.  

"But he hasn't even kissed me yet!"  And then she winced, as she hadn't meant to blurt out that, not to him.

But he took it with surprising grace, and shrugged.  "That doesn't necessarily mean anything.  If you want him to kiss you, then you have to let him know."  

"How?"  She couldn't help but ask, though this was not a conversation she'd ever have dreamed she'd have with him.  

He shrugged.  "I don't know.  Play it by ear.  I mean, it's not like we really know for sure if a girl wants to be kissed.  For all we know, she might slap us silly.  You gotta help a little, the first time, at least."  He peered at her, intently.  "You know, he might not be any more sure about it all than you are.  He probably isn't.  How long has this 'hanging out' been going on?"

"Three weeks."  

And Jean was sure that, if she could have seen Scott's eyes, he'd be rolling them.  Aloud, he said only, "Christ.  This is molasses here."  And it struck her -- more forcefully than ever before -- that she might have the extra years, but he was the one with all the experience, and she felt strangely young.  He'd sat up even straighter and half turned towards her on the bench, his voice almost didactic.  "Look, this guy probably doesn't have a clue if you're interested, if he's been hanging out with you for three weeks and he still hasn't made a move.  I mean, there's slow and casual, and then there's glacial.  I never took three weeks to kiss a girl."  And Jean was amused by that because she was quite sure it was true, and she was equally sure that he had no idea how arrogant that sounded.  "My advice is this -- you kiss him."  

"What?"

"I'm serious here.  I thought these were the '90s?  You know -- women's lib is passé and real women Just Do It and all that shit.  Er, crap."  

Bitten by embarrassment as much as amusement, she almost laughed out loud but suppressed it into a spurt of giggles.  "It's okay, Scott.  You really don't always have to watch your language with me."  

And that made him blush.  "Well, I guess.  But you always seem so . . . ladylike."  

"And you're giving 'take the bull by the horns' kissing advice to a lady?  I thought ladies were demure."  

And she could tell that he had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.  "It's okay," she said.  "I'm just teasing.  But I'm flattered, kind sir, that you think I'm a lady."  And standing, she dropped him a little curtsy.  

"Jean, you are," he mumbled, still embarrassed.  "I mean, you really are."  

Touched by this simple pronouncement more than by anything Hank had said earlier, she reached out to cup his cheek.  "If I'm a lady, then you're equally a gentleman, Mr. Summers."  He could have made this difficult; instead, he'd given her dating advice.  He could have resented her for not choosing him; instead, he'd called her a lady and meant it with painful honesty.  "But you're still allowed to say 'shit' in my hearing.  I promise, I've said far worse when I've broken a test tube or three."  

She hadn't thought he could possibly get any redder, but he was almost fluorescent.  He was also smiling.  Hand still on his cheek, she said, very softly, "Thank you, Scott.  For being a gentleman." 
 
 
 
 

Scott remained in Berkeley for the summer in a subleased studio apartment while EJ went home to direct his church's summer youth camp.  No longer living in the dorm, and with most of the other students he knew scattered, Scott lacked ready social distraction and when he wasn't in class, he might have holed up in his attic room noodling on his bass, ordering delivery pizza, and drinking lots of coke as he struggled with Complex Variables.  But the suggestions he'd made to his fellows back in Westchester hadn't excluded himself, so he made time for the gym and resumed the study of Shotokan Karate that he'd begun in high school on a lark.  He'd also signed up for piloting lessons.  

Phoebe was the only one of his personal circle who had remained in town, but she'd chosen to stay in the dorms, so he saw less of her than he might have expected.  He could have stayed in the dorms as well, but it would have meant accepting another roommate for the duration, and to his mind, it was baiting Fortune to grant him a second EJ.  He had neither the energy nor the inclination to begin anew with anyone less.  That he and EJ would room together again in the fall hadn't been something either had discussed.  They'd simply assumed it, and spent the end of spring looking for an apartment that was within cycling distance; EJ might have had a car but Scott didn't, and a parking permit amounted to a hunting license, in any case.  Unfortunately, cost complicated things.  Housing wasn't cheap; this was California, and worse, a college town.  Apartment complexes banked on the demand, and rent for even a single bedroom anywhere within a half-hour walk was exorbitant.  Yet being young men, and attractive young men who might hope for a date now and then, they had a desire for privacy, especially after living in cramped conditions for a year, and wanted two bedrooms.  But two bedrooms went for over a grand, and EJ simply couldn't afford it.  "No fucking way!" he'd announced after the seventh or eighth inquiry.  

So Scott had offered to pay two-thirds.  He had the means, and as the year had progressed, he'd grown less shy about occasionally using it, but EJ had refused.  Pride.  Scott understood pride.  And thus the matter had remained unsettled when the semester had ended and EJ had returned to LA, leaving Scott to solve the dilemma.  

In late June, when he had nearly despaired of finding anything and time was running out to secure even a one-bedroom for the fall, he spotted an ad in the local paper for a two-bedroom garage apartment on the south side.  It was a bit far to walk, but decent for riding.  And it was cheap, so he went to investigate, figuring at only $850 a month, there had to be a catch.  

The owner was a widow in her early seventies who had moved west with her husband even before the boom of the fifties and sixties.  Mrs. Eloise Gale.  She still set her hair in old-fashioned curlers and bobby pins every night, and wore lipstick to the grocery, to which she drove in an antiquated Dodge Dart that had less than 70,000 miles on it.  

"She must never drive the thing anywhere but to the grocery," Scott told EJ later.  "For the past twenty-five years!"

The apartment itself had turned out to be old but clean, with high ceilings, wooden floors, and double-hung windows set to maximize air circulation.  They'd have to live without a garbage disposal or central AC, but the dorms hadn't had AC either, and the place did have a washer and dryer for their use.  Mrs. Gale had explained the low rent thus, "I want some nice young men to live on the property.  It's not safe these days, you know, for a woman alone.  The rent is low, but it includes all the yard work, fixing things in the house, and keeping up my car.  I'm mostly blind, you see, and can't get around so well."  (And that was a bit alarming to think about, if she were still driving.)

Mrs. Gale had been a WAVE in World War II -- Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service -- and when she had learned that Scott was the son of an US Air Force pilot, and that his projected roommate was the son of a minister, that had more or less sealed the deal . . . which had been concluded with nothing more than a polite pat on his shoulder.  Scott hadn't been too sure what to make of the informality, but he'd phoned EJ to let him know that they had a place for the fall, and could he come up the next weekend to meet their landlady?  

Unfortunately, the small detail that EJ was the son of a black minister had never been specified.  It simply hadn't occurred to Scott that he should -- he'd become accustomed to Berkeley being Berkeley -- and it equally hadn't occurred to Mrs. Gale that a nice white boy might voluntarily choose to room with a black boy, however nice.  So when EJ had arrived with Scott on the quaint, white spindle-rail porch of their landlady's house and Scott introduced him with, "Mrs. Gail, this is Elijah Haight," everyone was surprised.  

She'd stared through the screen, her age-puckered mouth with its crooked, too-pink lipstick dropped in shock.  "But I've never rented to a colored before," she'd said.  

And Scott hadn't been sure for what he'd been was more embarrassed:  that he'd brought his friend there to be insulted, that it hadn't occurred to him to verify that it wouldn't be an issue in the first place, or that he'd called her 'a sweet old lady' to EJ on the phone.  Beside him, he'd felt EJ stiffen.  "You're the son of a minister?" she'd asked.  The screen door had remained closed.  

"Yes, ma'am.  My father's head minister at Bethany Baptist in LA."  

"Oh, a Baptist!  I'm a Baptist, too.  Northern Baptist, though."  

"Same here," EJ had said.  "American Baptist," using the more recent, less colloquial title for the branch.  

And the screen door had opened.  EJ had glanced at Scott, who'd shrugged, and they'd gone in.  Odd, the small details that could open a door, or leave it shut, and Scott had wondered what Mrs. Gale would think if she'd known the 'nice white boy' was a mutant.  Then again, it might matter to her more that he was an agnostic, lapsed Catholic.  

The only other event of any significance occurred in early August as the summer semester drew to a close.  Scott, having just booked his first hours of solo flight, asked Phoebe if she'd like to go out for a bite after, to celebrate.  If he talked more often to EJ by email, or to Frank by phone, neither was present and that evening, he wanted company with skin on.  So they met in Asian Square and had Japanese at Yokohama Station -- Phoebe ordered -- while Scott regaled her with an account of his first solo, a story well-honed now by its fifth retelling (EJ, Warren, the professor, and Ororo had all heard it already).  After dinner, they got a little drunk on cheap beer that they were too young to buy, but Phoebe had a friend who was willing to pick up two six packs if they footed the bill, and they got to take one back to Scott's studio apartment.  They began the night sitting on his sofa, talking about anything from the California water crisis to reincarnation.  

They ended the night in Scott's bed.  

It wasn't an easy morning.  He hadn't slept with a girl in over two years, and was rusty on morning-after etiquette.  In fact, he'd never slept with a girl at all, as in "go to sleep in the same bed after sex."  Not being the morning type, he woke after she did, to the sounds of her rummaging about in his bathroom, looking for God knew what.  Blinking in the brightness of a California noon, he lay flat on his back for a few minutes, staring at blurred, geometric shadows on the white ceiling and listening to the sound of construction work somewhere in the distance, while he pondered how best to proceed.  

He wasn't in love with her and she wasn't in love with him, but she'd felt more than friendship and inebriated lust.  Mutant or not, he occupied a special place in Phoebe's world.  She didn't occupy the same one in his, and hurting her had never been his intention.  So he hauled himself out of bed to make his way into the bathroom, where he found her bent over the sink, finger in her mouth, scrubbing her teeth with a makeshift digit toothbrush.  "You can use mine," he said.  "I don't think you'll give me any germs that I haven't already caught."  

Eyeing him sidewise and grinning, she spit foamy toothpaste into the sink, then said, 'Thanks.  But that'll do."   Her unwashed hair was lanky, but she was prettier than he might have expected, the morning after.  He still wasn't in love with her, and almost wished that he could be.  How to explain without either lying or seeming like a heartless bastard?  He'd suddenly become the kind of boy that mothers warned their daughters about.  

Christ.  Was there an automatic reset button for the last twenty-four hours?  

Splashing water on her face, she wiped it off with his striped towel, then came over to slip an arm around his neck and lean in to kiss him --

-- and he pulled his head back.  It was automatic, not planned.  She stared while his mind chased its own tail, trying to figure out what to say.  Nothing came.  He opened his mouth and nothing came out while he watched pain and humiliation crumple her face.  Letting him go, she pushed past him out into the little bedroom area, snatching up her discarded jeans and yanking them on while she collected her socks and bra.  She'd put her tank top back on the night before, to sleep in.  Now, turning her back on him, she pulled the top up over her head and snapped on the bra.  

And he just stood there.  His mind was blank and white, and he was making a terrible botch of this.  He could hear her breath hitch in a way that told him she was swallowing sobs, and he'd never felt so wretched.  "Just your average jerk with a penis."  The words floated back to him, words Jean had said about boys at Vandy.  Drunk boys at parties.  

And that was him, he thought.  He'd been the drunk boy, and he ran a hand over his face.  He hadn't taken off his sleeping goggles yet and had to look ridiculous, but it felt fitting that he look ridiculous.  "Phoeb.  Stop it.  Please."  

She was putting on her socks and shoes now, and she didn't stop at all.  Light slid in through the blind slats and made lines across her form.  She said nothing.  

"Phoebe.  It's not what you think."  

Finished, she jerked to her feet and screamed at him, "What the hell am I supposed to think then?"

He couldn't answer because it wasn't pretty.  "I care about you," he said finally, helplessly.  

She continued to glare for perhaps five breaths, then snagged her purse where it had been abandoned on his little eat-in table and stalked to the door.  "Blow it out your ass, Summers, along with the rest of your shit."  And she slammed the door behind her.  

He slid down the edge of the doorjamb until he was sitting on cold tile.  
 
 

"Not yet, not yet," Jean whispered, pulling Ted's hand up from the zipper on her slacks.  The other hand was busy with her left breast and his mouth busy at the right through the fabric of her bra, and oh, if she could rub her thighs together just right, there would be enough pressure for her to reach her climax, but she wasn't ready yet for his hand to help with that.  

"Okay," he whispered now around cloth and nipple, and had the good manners not to demand 'when?'  Jean couldn't have given him an answer if he had.  

It wasn't their first time at this.  Usually once a day, in his apartment, or her room at the mansion, or even the lab closet when Hank and Banner were gone, they were at each other with hands and mouths and everything was heated, plunging headlong and half-blind towards a consummation that Jean became increasingly aware she wasn't sure she wanted.  

She didn't love him.  She liked him -- liked him a lot, in fact, and he had a clever tongue, gentle fingers and a good heart.  But love him?  Jean wasn't sure she knew what love was, and sometimes she asked herself if she had to love him to have sex with him -- it had never been her requirement before -- but if not, then why did she hesitate?  

Guilt, maybe.  She wasn't in love with him.  But she wondered sometimes if he were in love with her?  That, she didn't know, and was afraid to ask because if one asked, shouldn't one want the answer?  And she didn't.  

So they didn't talk.  They made out in bedrooms and backrooms and lab closets and they didn't talk about it except in sentences of less than six words.  
 
 

Scott Summers had always thought of himself as a good and responsible person.  He didn't steal, he didn't say bad things about people behind their backs (usually), and he held the door open for others if he got there first.  He'd done things that embarrassed him, or of which he wasn't proud, and he'd done things that had turned out badly despite good intentions.  Yet even when he'd blown out the wall at his high school and given bruises and broken bones in the process, it had been an accident.  After, he'd gone to great lengths to ensure that no more accidents happened.  He wasn't cruel and he wasn't selfish.  

Yet now he'd done something that was both, and he had no idea how to fit that act into his previous views of himself.  Could a good person do a bad thing and still be a good person?  Some actions rotted the soul, like moral gangrene.  He was sick with it, and spent most of that Sunday either sitting on his couch and brooding or taking out his frustrations practicing the Big Four kata of Shotokan.  He'd been sunk in self-pity before, but this ran much deeper.  This was shame, dark and awful and sharp.  

He turned over in his head a few times who he might call to talk it out -- see if there was some way to fix it.  Summers was inclined to regard life in the active rather than the passive tense.  Yet talking about it would mean admitting his guilt, and how could he face EJ with this?  Phoebe was EJ's friend, too.  And Jean?  How could he phone Jean and tell her what he'd done after she'd called him a gentleman?   He hadn't been a gentleman last night.  He couldn't tell the professor either, couldn't face disappointing the man.  There was Warren, and Frank, but he wasn't sure either would be terribly helpful, and Ro would show no pity.  He tried calling Phoebe herself once, but she hung up on him as soon as she heard his voice.  

Sometime towards evening, his phone rang.  He let the answering machine pick up.  "Summers, it's Lee.  I've got the day off next Saturday and wondered if you'd like to go out on the water.  Buzz me back, and do it before Tuesday.  If you're not free, I'll find somebody else."  That wasn't a threat, just Lee's customary bluntness.  

He sat up on the couch.  Once before, Lee had given him good advice with regard to Phoebe; maybe she could help him again.  Jumping for the phone, he tried to catch her before she hung up but snagged the receiver only in time to hear the phone click.  And that was probably just as well.  This wasn't a conversation to tackle across a barrier of plastic and fiber optics.  Putting on his sandals, he fetched his bike.  

Getting to Lee's took a good ride, and he sweated heavily in the August swelter though it was almost dusk.  On some level, he found that purifying, the salt-scent of his own body and the salt-scent of the bay.  The sun was already below the horizon and the sky was a hot-wax blend of oranges and blues and a vivid violet (colors he knew rather than colors he saw), streaked here and there by the dark shadows of cirrus clouds.  There was no breeze and the heat lay thick on the black concrete of Forrester's Boat Rental parking lot, radiating up through the soles of his sandals.  The place was closed for the night, only the lights in the living quarters behind indicating that anyone was there.  Scott hoped that Lee hadn't gone out for the evening as he leaned his bike against one of the wooden columns on the porch.  Sea air had aged the wood, cracking it in places.  He rang the bell, then waited.  It was a long wait before a man in late middle age opened the door.  A white under-tank revealed thick, tanned arms corded with muscle from long years of physical labor and marked by almost stereotypical tattoos.  He grunted when he saw Scott.  "Can't you read the No Solicitation sign, kid?"  He pointed to a white sign in the window beside the door.  

"I'm not selling anything.  I'm Scott Summers, a friend of your daughter's . . ."

"Yeah, I recognize the name.  Come on in."  Turning, he yelled back into the depths of the house.  "Lee!  It's one of your band guys."  

Exiting the kitchen, a diet coke in one hand and a plastic tub of cottage cheese in the other -- spoon in her mouth -- Lee raised both her eyebrows at him, amused.  Taking out the spoon, she said, "A phone call back would've been just fine, y'know."  

Ignoring her attempt at humor, and uncomfortable standing just inside the doorway with her father watching, he shuffled his feet and said, "You want to go for a walk on the dock?  Just to talk, I mean."  

Still amused, she said, "Actually, I'd rather sit on the dock so I can eat my dinner.  Come on."  And she led him around to the dockside of the building.  The hot-wax sky was dimming to royal purple and security lights glittered on bay water.  Waves made slapping and sucking sounds at the wooden struts and the hulls of boats.  Somewhere nearby a fish leapt.  The scent of brine and the bite of gasoline from engines was strong.  She took him some distance from the house where they seated themselves on sun-warmed wood.  The rising and falling whine of passing cars marked the access road, invisible behind a sandy ridge.  "So what's up?" she asked.  

"I screwed up," he replied.  "I screwed up pretty damn bad."  Angry at himself again, he plucked a stray pebble from the dock and flung it hard at the water.  "Just another jerk with a penis."  

She shook salt from a little pewter shaker into the tub of cottage cheese and ate in silence, let the weight of that draw him out.  After a while, he began to talk, haltingly and in a disjointed fashion, telling her what had transpired the night before, and that morning.  When he was done, she said, "And you want me to fix it?"

"I don't want you to fix it.  But yeah, it needs fixed.  Or something.  You gave me pretty good advice once before."  

Finished now with her cottage cheese, she set the tub between her knees and tapped the spoon against the white plastic side.  "You need to talk to her."  

"I tried that!"

"No, you didn't.  You called her and let her hang up on you.  Why don't you go over to the dorm and sit outside her door?  She'll have to come out eventually, if just to go to the bathroom."   She studied his face in the near dark.  "Are you sorry?"

"Yes."  

"I mean are you truly sorry?"

"Yes.  I wasn't trying to hurt her."  

"You asked her out."  

"No, I didn't.  I just asked if she wanted to go eat dinner with me.  I didn't ask her out."  

"Did she know the difference?"

"We've done it before -- just go eat together, I mean.  Without the beer.  But I don't . . . I never wanted to be the kind of guy who uses people.  A girl, I mean.  Well, not anyone, but . . .  Jesus Fucking Christ!"  He pressed his face against his drawn up knees.  "I can't even make any goddamn sense talking!"

He felt the back of her hand slide against the side of his face.  It was soft and cool like forgiveness.  "Scott, you need to talk to her, not to me.  You're not a bad guy, y'know.  You just made a mistake.  It happens.  You care enough to want to fix it -- that says a lot about you."  

He raised his face.  "I don't want to be a jerk with a penis."  

That got a grin out of her.  "You said that already.  More or less.  Did she call you that?"

"No.  But Jean -- you know, my friend Jean, back in New York -- "

"Scott, everyone who knows you knows who Jean is."  

He blushed.  "Anyway, she was talking about guys at Vandy that way.  They did the same thing to her and I just . . . I'd like to hurt them, because they hurt her.  I don't want to be like that.  Maybe I should, you know, go out with Phoebe for a while, so she doesn't think I just used her."  

"Shit, no!  Look -- you can't make it not hurt that you don't feel about her like she feels about you, not anymore than Jean can make it not hurt for you."  He winced internally; that wasn't a comparison he'd previously considered.  "But dating her for a while and then breaking up is really condescending."  

She pushed herself to her feet, empty plastic tub in one hand and offering him leverage up with the other.  "You're still a jerk with a penis, Summers, but you're basically a decent jerk.  Try starting with an honest apology and go from there."  

He took her advice, but cornering Phoebe required two days and careful strategy since he didn't want to embarrass them both by conducting this particular conversation in a dorm hallway.  He finally caught her outside the library computer lab and followed her from the building.  Either her anger had filtered away or she was tired of avoiding him, but she left the sidewalk and headed out across the grass into the shade of an old Valley Oak, where she waited for him to catch her up.  "Would you quit stalking me!" she snapped, when he did.  

"I'm not stalking you.  I'm trying to apologize, dammit."  

"I don't want your goddamn excuses -- "

"I'm not offering any!  I said I was trying to apologize.  It's not the same thing.  Now would you please shut up and listen to me?"

She did.  They were both breathing heavily.  When it was clear that she was giving him a chance, he said, "I'm sorry, Phoeb.  What happened shouldn't have happened.  I wasn't trying to take advantage of you.  I just got drunk.  That's not an excuse.  It's a reason; that's all.  What happened was a mistake."  

Leaf-filtered sunlight glinted off moisture in her dark eyes and she looked down.  "Gee, thanks.  I was your big mistake."  

"Fuck," he muttered and rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushed up his glasses absently.  "Not like that.  What happened was a mistake because what you wanted and what I wanted . . ."  He trailed off.  He was just digging himself deeper and he had no clue how to get out of the pit, until he thought about what Lee had said on Sunday night, comparing his situation with Phoebe to Jean's with him.  If the shoe were on the other foot, he wondered, what he would want to hear?  

"Listen," he said softly.  "I like you.  I don't love you, but I like you a lot.  That's not feeding you a line.  I'm not in the habit of going to bed with people I don't give a rat's ass about.  I've just been lonely.  I needed somebody to touch.  It wasn't only about the sex.  But I should have . . . I should have been clearer, at the outset.  I wasn't.  I let things happen because it seemed like a good idea at the time.  You are not someone I want to hurt, Phoeb."  He said it as softly as he could.  "It hurt me, too.  It hurts me, to see you hurting."  

"You like me," she whispered, "but you don't like me that way."  

The smallness of her voice made his heart ache.  "No," he whispered back.  "I'm sorry."  

"Why?"

And how, he puzzled, should he answer that?  "I don't know.  It's just . . ."  He shrugged helplessly.  "It's not something you can make happen."  

"Is it something about me -- ?"

"No."  He cut her off before she could finish.  "No.  I told you, I like you.  I like talking to you, I like spending time with you.  You're fun.  But the . . . that click . . . it just didn't happen for me."  

"Then why . . . I mean, if the . . . if you're not attracted to me that way, then why did you go to bed with me?"

"Christ, Phoeb, you're not exactly ugly!  And I told you -- it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Don't you ever, just . . . you know, need to touch someone?  Get a hug from a friend?"

"Sex is pretty far from a hug, Scott!"

"Yeah.  But it wasn't just about the sex."  He stopped, so he could figure out what he was trying to say.  And why had he gone to bed with her?  Drunk and horny hadn't been all of it.  "Guys . . . we can separate sex and love pretty easily.  But this wasn't that.  I told you, I'm not in the habit of sleeping with just anyone who's willing.  Some guys can, but I'm not made that way.  I have to trust the person."  

"Because of the glasses?"

"No.  It's just . . . the kind of guy I am.  It's true I haven't been to bed with anybody since -- " He tapped the glasses in question.  "But not like you mean.  I needed a lot of things on Saturday.  I needed to touch somebody, I needed to know that someone wasn't scared to death of me, and I needed to know that I was still attractive.  Maybe it sounds dumb, but guys worry about that kind of thing, too."  

She was actually listening to him now, and he recalled the professor's advice when he had first told EJ about his power -- that if he wanted forgiveness, he had to bare his own fears.  

"Where things went wrong," he continued, "is that I didn't make it clear.  I just let it happen because I needed it.  You needed something else, and thought it was something else, and I didn't tell you otherwise -- "

"You knew how I felt."  

"Yeah, I did.  Sort of."  And that hurt.  Saying that hurt.  It punched him hard in the belly because it was true, that he'd wounded someone else because he'd let it be all about him.  "I had a pretty good idea, anyway.  But I was too drunk to think about it.  And that was . . ." He looked away, then finished, very softly.  "That was wrong, and I feel awful because I do like you, and I didn't . . . I never wanted to be that kind of person.  I never wanted to hurt someone that way."  

He felt the sharp sting on his cheek before he quite registered that she'd slapped him, and not with a little tap.  She'd slapped him hard enough to knock his glasses askew.  Putting a hand up to the burn, and straightening his glasses, he stared at her.  She was genuinely crying now, and trying to talk in spite of it.  "You are a piece of work, Scott Summers.  I don't know whether to believe you or not -- that you're sorry.  You knew.  You knew.  It's not okay, y'know?  An apology doesn't make it suddenly okay."  She swallowed.  "I guess I should thank you for bothering to make one, but I don't feel thankful right now.  I just . . .   Go away.  Quit following me.  I don't want to see you.  Not for a while.  Maybe in a few weeks, when the semester starts.  Maybe then I can see you and not want to gut you.  But not right now."  And she left him standing there, a hand still on his face.  

Feeling shaky, he went into the library to the men's room and stared in the mirror at the red mark on his cheek, and he understood several things all at once.  Good people could do bad things, and words weren't always a magic fix.  Illusions about the self were fragile and shattered easily; he wasn't the person he'd thought he was.  And trust, once broken, was slow to mend.  But most of all, he realized that feelings were like fish, slippery and bright and stupid.  They didn't respond to reason.  

Phoebe was mad at him.  Furious.  And rightfully so.  And he was mad at Jean.  Still.  He just hadn't let himself admit it since he'd left Westchester.  But he was angry, deeply, deeply angry, and bruised in all his tender places.  And those bruises had finally shown up in all their dark glory.  

Jean didn't love him.  Not like he wanted her to.  And he couldn't make her, not anymore than Phoebe could make him feel something he didn't feel.  But understanding that didn't make him hurt any less, either.  It didn't make him feel less small and unimportant.  It didn't make him not wonder why Jean couldn't love him back.  "What's wrong with me, that she doesn't love me?" he asked the mirror, then felt immediately stupid for the question.  It sounded so pathetic.  

Bending over the sink basin in the empty bathroom, he took off his glasses, squeezed his eyes shut and let himself cry.  
 
 
 

"Hey, boy-o."  

"Hey."  

"I haven't heard from you in a while, not even email.  I got a little worried.  You okay out there?"

There was a short silence on the other end of the phone line and Jean waited uneasily.  Then he said, "I don't really feel like talking to you right now, Jean."  

Belly-drop alarm.  "Why?  What's wrong?"

Another silence, then, in a tight voice, he said, "You just . . . Jean, I'm not a gentleman.  Not really.  I'm just a guy, okay?  I can't always be reasonable and grown-up.  I know you can't control how you feel -- or how you don't feel -- about me.  But I can't stop what I feel, either, and I'm kind of angry right now.  I need some space, so I can learn how not to be so angry.  It's not . . . I don't blame you.  I don't blame you.  But I'm still angry.  So don't call me again.  And don't send me email for a while."  And he hung up.  

Sighing, at once irritated and guilty, Jean leaned back against the headboard of her bed and stared at the ceiling.  'Feelings,' she remembered the professor telling her once, 'are neither right nor wrong.  They just are.  And sometimes, we must forgive ourselves for them.'

Or forgive others, she added.  

Scott was right, she thought.  He wasn't a gentleman, or a character in a medieval romance, and she'd been unfair to cast him in that role.  He was just human, and human feelings were sometimes messy.  

Go on to Chapter 8, "Fire and Ice"