Warning:  Vanilla and cream with lots of sugar. Some generic or allusive discussion of sex.

"What?" I glance around, trying to play dumb.

Jean half-laughs at me as she glances out the door after the red-head who just exited. The one who I'd been following with my eyes as she browsed the little shop.

Caught again. These damn shades are just useless with Jean.

We exit, too, leave the rustic jumble of overpriced soap and maple syrup, calico dolls and Amish quilts and wooden tourist nicknacks couched in pretty displays on sanitized hay. Smiling, her fingers lace through mine as we amble down a sidewalk outside art shops in the renovated New Salem Marketplace. "What is it about you and red-heads?" She's still struggling not to laugh.

"I may be on a diet, but I can still read the menu," I mutter.

"You've used that line before. It's a day old and a week stale. At least you're not looking at blondes."

"Not into Kansas Corn Queens, thank you. Strictly classy women with red hair and great legs who look really sexy in tight sweaters." Absently, I tuck the tag down in the back of hers.

She does laugh then as we pause to survey the display window for a . . . what? . . . Knitting store? Good god. How can there be an entire store devoted to yarn? The store beyond sells glass art: cast, blown, and bevel-cut windows. I drag her over to look at that. If we ever do get a house and can quit playing residence hall parents at the mansion, I want to put a bevel-glass window in our front door. She leaves me standing there, slips into the Christmas shop on the other side with a "I'll just be a minute." I hate Christmas shops, so I enter the glass shop instead. The owner watches me cautiously. I learned a long time ago that when a man alone walks into a store and doesn't remove his sunglasses, the counter help gets antsy. That's one reason I dress the way I do. I appear less threatening in button-downs and cardigans. The shades and my leather jacket really make people nervous. "Can I help you?" the woman asks.

I smile at her --­ the 'charming smile' I use sometimes. I'm not oblivious to what it gets me. "No, thanks. I was just admiring."

She smiles back, and Jean has appeared in the open door, backlit by autumn sun. "Scott, hon? You ready?" I follow her out to continue our afternoon of goofing off.

This four-block-square strip called the Marketplace is the heart of the township's recent attempt 'to revitalize for the new millennium,' which amounts to giving tax cuts and rental assistance to the small independent art shops that appeal to the tourons (tourist + moron) who are the life blood of this area. There are leaf peepers who haunt the whole region in October and November --­ that is, right now --­ chasing the fall foliage south. In summer come the city vacationers, and in winter the ski freaks who descend like a plague of bipedal locusts in their obnoxious neon snow-suits. I think I hate them the most.

I've lived in New York, off and on, for eight years now and still can't ski. I consider it a point of honor not to learn. Jean, who grew up in New York and skis very well, tells me that I'm being reactionary. I probably am. That doesn't mean I'm going to learn. I don't care if James Bond skis. Cyclops doesn't.

Now, coming out of a shop right in front of us is the red-head I saw earlier. She almost collides with us, apologizes and hurries on. She's a pretty woman, but this close, I can tell the hair owes more to Miss Clairol than to nature.

Jean glances at me. Her eyes are dancing. As soon as the woman is out of earshot, she says, "Mine is real. More or less."

"Believe it or not," I reply. "I have noticed -- up close and personal. The rug matches the drapes. Some things women don't dye. Usually."

She lets out a small shocked sound and hits at me, chases me across the street. I try to defend myself, but mostly, I'm laughing too hard at her indignation. It's a good thing the kids aren't around. They really have no idea how hot-tempered Jean is, think her the poster girl for Miss Calm and Collected. They should see some of the bruises this woman gives me.

An elderly couple watches us with indulgent amusement. I've caught Jean from behind, my arms crossed in front of her, hands holding her wrists immobile while she tries to kick my kneecap. We're laughing. But suddenly aware of ­-- and embarrassed by ­-- an audience, we stop wrestling in public like teenagers on a first date. As we pass the couple, the woman smiles at Jean. "You keep him in line, honey."

Jean smiles. "I try."

Sometimes it's nice to be taken for normal. World-saving mutant X-Men out for a Sunday stroll, all by ourselves and not a crisis in sight. "We should get ice cream," I say.

"Scott, it's fifty degrees."

I shrug.

She rolls her eyes. "Okay. Come on, but if I'm cold after, you have to keep me warm." And she heads off towards the ice cream shop.

In the distance, I see the other red-haired woman disappear into yet another store. I catch up to Jean, slip my arm around my own red-haired woman. Very quick, I lean in to brush my lips over that hair. "I'll keep you warm now."

It makes her smile.
 
 
 
 

I confess, I do have a thing for red-heads. Everyone who knows me well, knows that. You wouldn't think red hair would appeal particularly since everything I see is some shade of red (or black). And even if red hair did stand out for me (which yes, it does, ­ as a purer color), wouldn't I be damn tired of red?

But the truth is, I had a thing for red hair long before I wound up with red shades.

It started in kindergarten. Her name was Leah. She had Shirley Temple curls in bright flame instead of gold. She also had faded-copper confetti freckles all over her pale-ivory skin. No one had explained to me that I wasn't supposed to like freckles, that they weren't the all-American ideal. Between the bright hair and those freckles, I thought her the most interesting thing in my class. And although at five, most of my male age-mates were chasing Hotwheels, not girls, I used to wait at the front window for her mother to drive up in a slick blue 1971 Dodge Coronet, and let her out. I'd meet her at the door to carry whatever she was bringing to kindergarten that day. She would permit me to kiss her, sloppy child-kisses that made my belly drop for reasons I was really too young to fathom yet. Our parents thought it 'cute.' But I was heart-broken when my father got a transfer off Eglin out to White Sands that summer, and our family moved. A psychologist would probably have a field day with Leah and me and theories of fixations and fetishes. A mutant Charlie Brown pining after his little red-haired girl.

Anyway, Jean has freckles. Light ones. She keeps them covered with makeup. I'm still not sure she believes me when I say that I like them; she thinks I'm flattering her. But I do like freckles, dammit.
 
 
 
 

My passion for ice cream, or Sweet Tarts, is almost as legendary as the one I harbor for red hair. I'll eat any flavor but that awful White House cherry or stuff that's green (that is, pistachio). But invariably, whatever Jean has looks better. In this case, pumpkin pie. Maybe it's just an excuse to get her to hold the cone for me. "You're a pig," she says, laughing as she watches me eat half her ice cream along with my own (chocolate espresso).

"Yeah?" I say. "So what else is new?"

"God. Why am I dating you?"

"I don't know. After three years, I'm still trying to figure that out. I've got a cute smile and great biceps?"

Looking off, she grins faintly. "The lethally sexy back muscles are better. But that's not why. I love you because you let me trust you."
 
 
 
 

"Aren't you going to wash your face?"

Startled, Jean jumped and turned to look at me. She was dressed in one of my shirts, old flannel borrowed for the night. Remembering the way fabric pressed light against the outline of her nipples would turn me on now every time I wore that shirt. I'd leaned into the doorjamb to watch her borrow my toothbrush, too, and get ready for bed. This was the fifth time we'd had sex, but the first she'd agreed not to go back to her room until morning. For some weird reason, we always wound up in my room.

We'd decided to hell with the student gossip mill. I knew there was a bet on. After I'd serenaded Jean in the dining hall on my knees in front of God and everybody, the kids had started a pool on how long it would take me to get her into bed. I didn't really like being the subject of speculation but I was going to have my revenge, of a sort. No doubt tomorrow some money (or CDs) would change hands, and they'd all be dead wrong by over a week. The first time hadn't been in my room or hers. It had been in the rear of the Mercedes. I was twenty-two but had never had sex in the backseat of a car until I did it with a thirty year old woman after we'd been to dinner and a movie. The Lion in Winter on the big screen, with Peter O'Toole as Henry II, Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the film debut of Anthony Hopkins as Prince Richard. A pretty safe first-date flick. The sex after had been completely unexpected, and it had been pure chance I'd even had a condom in my wallet. But I can move fast when I'm inspired. Nonetheless, sex-in-a-car wasn't something we were in a hurry to repeat. Cramped conditions aside, I'd fallen off the seat and bruised my tailbone and ego both. She'd laughed herself silly (once she was sure I wasn't really hurt).

Now, she said, "I, um, already cleaned my face."

I just blinked at her. Jean had never lied to me so baldly anyway, and why on earth she'd lie about washing her face I couldn't figure. It made absolutely no sense. So, annoyed, I picked up the washcloth and wet it. "You took your mascara off. But I can tell makeup from bare skin, Jean, whatever Revlon advertizes. I'm not stupid. Or blind."

She shook her head and tried to duck out of the bathroom door around me, but I caught her by the waist and pushed her up against the jamb. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just ­--   Don't, Scott."

I handed her the washcloth. "I don't get it. Do you think it matters to me if you have a rose birthmark on the end of your nose? Which I can tell you don't. I love you, not your face. You know that. Trust me. Take your makeup off and let's get some sleep. We've got to get up at six."

I left her in there, crawled into bed, put on my sleeping goggles -- and waited.

She came out after a minute. I'd been half afraid that maybe she did have a blemish somewhere I hadn't noticed. Not that I'd have cared, but it hurt me --­ more than a little --­ that she was so afraid I would care. There was no birthmark, no scars. Instead, she had a little splash of freckles faint across her nose and cheeks. They made her look younger and unbearably cute. I grinned. "You were afraid of freckles?"

"Don't laugh."

"I'm not! I like freckles."

She rolled her eyes and slid into bed beside me. "Flattery will get you everywhere."

Scooting down, I turned on my side to smile at her. "It's not flattery. I really do like freckles."

"You are the strangest man."

"Is that why you agreed to go out with me?"

"No."

"So why did you?"

"Maybe I have a thing for guys with shades who sing me James Taylor." She studied me a minute. "Do you have to sleep in them?"

"The goggles? Yeah. Sorry."

"Don't apologize, you nit-wit. I was simply thinking they must be uncomfortable."

"Not too much. I just don't sleep on my stomach any more."

She sighed. "God, I love him, but Hank can be slow on the uptake about some things. I think we can find something better for you to sleep in."

I shrugged and rolled onto my back. I really hated the damn goggles but didn't want her to know that for some reason. There were aspects of my gift I despised but had learned to live with. No sense in making others miserable, or having them feel sorry for me. Rose quartz was better than being blind. Or being dead --­ the only other options I'd seen once, to avoid killing someone by accident. I'd rather sleep uncomfortable than risk destroying the roof, or my bed partner.

"Close your eyes," she said now, softly, reaching for the goggles.

I sat up and scooted away, almost off the bed. "Jean, don't. It's not a game. I could hurt you. I don't wear these things for my fashion sense."

"You won't hurt me. I've seen you without glasses or visor before, in the lab. I trusted you a minute ago. I took the makeup off. Now, you trust me. Take the goggles off."

There was a good deal of difference between her makeup and my glasses. Still, she had a point about trust. I'd asked for hers. So turning my head away, I shut my eyes tightly and removed the goggles, felt her fingers as she took them out of my hands. "Jean --­ "

"Shhh." Then she kissed my bare face. I jerked back.

"Don't do that! Don't put yourself in front of me without some protection!"

Her hands were on either of my cheeks, holding me still. "Don't you pull away from me. With your eyes shut, you're harmless. You know that."

"If I cracked my eyelids by accident even for a second ­-- "

"Have you ever?"

I didn't answer. Because, in fact, I never had. Not once. But I wasn't going to play Russian Roulette with Jean and my control. If I killed her, I wouldn't be able to live.

"I trust you," she said.

"You shouldn't."

"I can't stay with a man if he won't let me trust him."

She moved to get out of my bed and desperate, I grabbed for her. "Jean, don't leave me! Please!" My hand didn't connect with her body, but I didn't open my eyes to find out where she was. "Jean!"

"See?" she said.

"I can't see anything!"

She laughed and her hands were back on my face. I could feel her mind pressing into my own. It was almost as frightening as having her face in front of me, but I loved this particular adrenaline rush. Her telepathic touch was as addictive as a drug. She was full of pleased certainty and wanted me to know it. "I scared you, and you still didn't open your eyes."

"That was one hell of a test, Jean."

"You had to see for yourself. I knew."

"What if you'd been wrong?"

"Then you'd have taken out your dresser and a wall. That's all. Now, do you trust me to trust you?" She was getting my t-shirt off. Then I felt her body press against mine; she had the borrowed shirt open in front and I sucked in breath at the soft crush of breast. "Make love to me without the glasses or the goggles or the visor."

"I don't trust myself that much -- and you should know better than to ask. Doctor. Besides, maybe I want to see your face when you come."

She sighed. "Okay. But let me kiss you a while without the goggles. Will you trust that far?"

"All right."

It was a long time before I agreed to enter her body with nothing between my eyes and her but my eyelids. Even now, I turn my head aside at the critical moment, just to be safe. We don't always make love without my eyeband, and it's less intense for me when we do because I can't completely let go. But it's worth it. And it started that night. I was half-dressed and completely naked.
 
 
 
 

Jean and I have dinner at a little Mexican restaurant we love, one street off the Marketplace. It's dim inside and the plaster is cracked but the tables are clean with checkered tablecloths and those restaurant-ubiquitous big teardrop votive candles. Colored Christmas lights adorn the walls, and cheap piñatas, and pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Ramon serves the best quesadillas I've ever had and Corona with lime, and he knows but doesn't care that we're mutants. The attitude, not the exceptional food, is why we come back.

I don't drink much at the mansion, not because I have anything against alcohol (I was raised Catholic, not protestant), but because I don't want to tempt the kids by keeping it around. I turned a blind eye when the elder boys once stole some of Logan's Budweiser. (How can he drink that cat piss?) It was better if they experimented where they wouldn't be driving a car, and I could keep an eye on them ­-- whether or not they realized it. Still, I wasn't about to let them make a habit of it. Logan had agreed with me on the matter; he has more common sense about teenagers than I sometimes gave him credit. He now keeps his beer in a little fridge in his own room, and knows exactly how much is there. He's kept beer for me, too, but I just don't care enough about it to go through the hassle on a regular basis.

Yet I like a beer now and then, and I like even better some time away from the school, with Jean. We all get it. Professor's rule. Each of the adult staff must take four hours off-grounds each week. It can be as simple as shopping for supplies, but he makes us get out. And once a month, we have to take four to six consecutive hours. Meaning we have to get lost for at least half a day. Usually, Jean and I take our time together and the Marketplace is a favorite haunt for us, but some of the best times I've had has been spent with Charles. Fishing.

He doesn't exempt himself. He's got more sense than that. So we go fishing together because we both love it and it gives us a chance to be more than mentor and student over good German beer, bad soggy sandwiches, and barbless fly-fishing. But I won't take him out on a boat. He swims very well; a lot of paraplegics do. Swimming is his favorite form of physical therapy. But I'm not about to take him out on a boat and risk an accident which could leave me blind in the water unable to help him if he needed it.

So no boats. But sun and water and a pier, an occasional bite on our lines.

In any case, and just now, Jean and I are ending our evening over a dinner we don't have to share with howling masses under twenty, and getting a little drunk and silly on Corona. Not too much; I have to drive back. But enough to really relax. The red-haired woman we saw earlier enters with her own party and involuntarily, I glance over, then jerk attention back to my dining partner.

She has that smirk again. "What would you say if I dyed my hair? I'm getting a bit tired of red."

She's yanking my chain and I let her --­ "Don't you dare" --­ but I yank back, too. "And anyway, you do dye your hair."

"I do not!"

I raise my eyebrows. She amends, "Well, it's only to keep the grey out. I don't dye it."

I smile and take a drink of beer. Jean's touchy about the dye thing. It's more than covering grey. I pretend that I don't notice she keeps what's on her head a little brighter than what I've found between her legs. It doesn't matter to me. I love her red hair. But I don't love Jean because she's a red-head.

Not, mind, that I'm complaining about it.

Now, she adds, "I'm just not ready to be Jean very-Grey."

"I'd settle for Jean Summers."

She reaches across the table to squeeze my hand. "Soon."

A little over six months, in fact. May first. Assuming the world leaves us alone long enough to have a wedding. This is the third time we've set a date. She told me she always wanted to be married on May Day. It's not a Saturday, but if she wants to be my May Queen, I'm not going to argue. I don't care, myself. I just want to get married already. If it doesn't work this time, I'm going to suggest we elope, take off for LA in the Blackbird. I know a certain Baptist preacher there whose son I roomed with for four years at Berkeley. The Right Reverend Jeremiah Haight owes me a favor or three.

Now she's looking at me from under lashes, but not to tease. She's nervous about something. "Scott, um -- ­  We've not talked about this yet, and I don't want to hurt you, but --­ " She pauses, swallows.

It kills me when she still acts nervous of telling me things. I bend down a little to catch her eyes and put my hand over hers. "Just spit it out."

"I'm not going to be Jean Summers. I love you and I can hardly wait to be your wife ­-- legally, not just in virtual fact because I sort your socks and sleep in your bed -- but my name is Jean Grey. I'm not changing it."

I sit back in my chair. I don't know why, exactly, I'm startled. Jean has publications and a career -- a fairly prominent one given her youth (and she is young for her field). Her decision makes perfect sense.

"Are you upset?" she asks me.

I can't lie to her. I may not always volunteer the truth, but I don't lie if she asks me something point-blank. She'd know. "A little," I say now. "I'll get over it. Just wounded male pride."

That makes her smile. "It's social conditioning. But you do understand why I'm keeping my name?"

"Yes ­-- your job. 'Dr. Jean Grey' is fairly well known. 'Dr. Jean Summers' isn't."

She shakes her head, once, sharp. "That's not why. The reason I'm keeping my name is because I'm marrying you, not becoming your property."

Not that. "Jean, don't be stupid. You're not my property; I've never thought that way and you know it. More like I'm yours. I should have it tattooed on the back of my neck like those labels in kids clothes for preschool: 'property of Jean Grey.'"

She doesn't laugh. Instead, her chin has raised high into pure Stubborn-Jean. She enunciates clearly, like Hank at his worst. "It is not stupid. Would you change your name to Grey?"

"Christ! It's just a social convention! You're not selling your soul." I'm sidestepping and we both know it.

"Easy for you to say," and she slams down her napkin on the table, starts to rise.

I grab her hand before she can storm out. She will. She's done it to me before. Like I said, the kids have no idea what a temper she really has. "Okay, I'm sorry. Sit down. I'm just --­ "

"Conditioned." She settles back into her seat. "Your father was an air force pilot and your mother a good little military wife. But I'm not your mother. And I'm not property to be handed over from my father to you. There will be no 'giving away of the bride' at this wedding, Scott. I enter into it by my choice. I'll be your life companion until I die, but I was born a Grey and that's the name I'll have on my tombstone. Asking me to take yours is to take away my selfhood."

"Jean ­-- " I sigh and drink my beer because I really haven't got a clue what to say. I don't understand why this is bothering me so much, but I'm honest enough to admit that it is, and I'm suddenly unsure of things I'd believed as certain as death and taxes. If she didn't want to take my name, was she ashamed of me? How could she love me if she was ashamed of me? "The name thing is just a symbol, and it keeps things less confusing at the post office."

"The post office can take care of itself. Symbols have power, Scott, or they wouldn't be symbols in the first place. They're not just here," she taps her forehead. "They're here, too." She touches her abdomen. Then she looks me in the eye. She has that 'I'm not going to budge on this' expression. "Will you marry Jean Grey? Or insist that I become your trophy wife?"

"It's more like I'm the trophy husband. Which of us is younger and who has 'Dr' in front of her name?"

I hadn't meant that to sound bitter. I really hadn't. I'd meant it to be funny. But it came out bitter anyway.

Her eyes have softened. "You'll get the 'Dr,' too, someday. You're almost done with the master's thesis."

"And that's as far as Hank can go with it. You know that."

"You'll get it."

"When?" I lower my voice and lean over the table. "When mutants and norms all sing 'I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony' and drink Coke together?"

I've finally made her smile. It's nice to know my sense of humor never deserts me, no matter how much it hurts.

"We can't afford for me to go back to school right now," I continue, "and not any time in the near future, either. I gave up the degree when I left Berkeley. I knew that; I made that choice."

She takes my hand, lifts it to kiss the backs of my fingers. "You'll get your degree if I have to kick your stubborn ass back into grad school single-handedly. And you're definitely not my trophy husband, leader of the X-Men. But now you understand why I need to stay Jean Grey? I refuse to belittle you, or let you belittle yourself. Don't belittle me. Don't take my name away."

"Fine. I understand." And I did.

But she knows that's not all of it. She touched me. She knows there's more but she won't steal it out of my head. "What is it?" she asks.

"Are you ashamed of me? Embarrassed to be my wife? I'm a lot younger --­ "

"Oh, shut up about that already!" I'm grateful for the table between us or I think she might hit me. Instead, she takes my hand once more and says into my mind where I know she can't lie. I'm not ashamed of you and I'm not refusing the name Summers. I'm just keeping the name Grey. You see the difference? I will be very proud to be your wife.

I'm grinning like an idiot, but I can't help it. Beer and love. "And I'll be proud to be your husband. How many guys have a lady who gets invited to lecture at international bio-genetics conferences in Stockholm? But you'd damn well better take me with you or I'll get jealous'"

She's laughing as she lets my hand go. "I'll take you with me to Stockholm as long as you don't develop a thing for blondes in the meantime."

"Never. Just redheads."

The smile still plays with her lips. "Fair enough. You like red hair. I like red shades. We make a good pair."

"We do."

Notes:  This little romp is ALL Shannon Chester's fault. It started as a tossed-off comment via email about Scott and red hair.  That said, the other motivation is that I've read several treatments of Jean and Scott as a couple in moviefic, but these stories often focus on someone else and Jean and Scott function to give comment on the main characters. I wanted to do a Scott-&-Jean-as-pre-existing-couple story in which no one else figures and they have a conversation that isn't about anyone at the mansion, and even have a little quarrel in which Logan's name doesn't appear once.

Go on to #4 in The Man Behind Red Shades:  Goddess of the Moon

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