Heyoka: Chapter 4
by Minisinoo
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Notes: They're Marvel's (mostly), not mine. Remember that this story is adult fiction; there's some graphic sex in this chapter, even if it is between a committed couple. If that bugs you, skim it or stop reading now. No, I don't hate Scott; I'd think that would be obvious by now. Don't flame me on Jean's behalf. I don't hate Jean, either. Don't flame me on Scott's behalf. The name of Scott's father is from the comics. The Bonnie Raitt lyrics come from "Nick of Time" off her album of the same name. And yes, Famke Jansenn is about 8 years older than James Marsden; I preserved the difference instead of narrowing it. See Part I for other disclaimers.
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John Proudstar with his mutant strength had been selected to carry Grace down to the medlab infirmary, after she had healed Jake O'Dell. "All she really needs is sleep," Jean had said. "But I'd like to check her vital signs." It was Jean's responsibility as a doctor. She might not like the Indian girl, but she didn't want Grace Kills-his-Horse dead.
She just wanted her gone.
From Westchester, from New York. From Scott.
He was hovering, concerned. Damn him. Couldn't he make his feelings a little less obvious? A woman had her pride. Even the boy John was looking at him strangely. The professor and Ororo were trying not to.
They say in spring, a young man's fancy turns to love. But this was late October.
You're off your seasons, Scott.
Truth was, Jean had always assumed that if their relationship should one day end, it would be her to end it, for a combination of factors. She was older. He had pursued her first. And he was responsible to a fault. He'd asked her to marry him. Scott Summers, X-Men leader, heir to Xavier's dream and Berkeley graduate magna cum laude (so not summa, so what?) would never go back on his given word just for a roll in the hay with an Indian girl and her megawatt smile, high school diploma by GED, and anger in her soul.
Some things are simply not meant to be.
But he was, indisputably, attracted to Grace. Jean wondered if he knew it, had admitted it yet to himself. Jean knew. Not by telepathy. She knew it because Grace's name kept invading Scott's conversation, because he hung around the school office drinking too much black coffee and annoying the fish in Grace's tank, because Jean had more than once caught him daydreaming and he wouldn't tell her about what. Now, he was watching her work on Grace like his will alone could make the girl okay a girl much closer to his own age than Jean was.
You're lying to yourself, Scott. You're lying to me. But the thought never reached beyond her own skull. It was just the same old story here: older woman replaced by a fresh, younger model in a man's affections. Jean had turned thirty-four last month. Her body had started to fall apart in small ways. Once fine ivory skin now needed Oil of Olay to preserve its tone, her breasts had begun to sag (thank god for wonder bras), there was more grey in the hair on her head (kept carefully dyed), and more hair in other places where it didn't belong (kept carefully plucked). Her eyes now had dark rings of a morning and very fine lines bracketed her mouth. She had become hyperaware of the ticking clock in her womb, too. She wanted to carry a child there, feel it move beneath her ribs. His child. She was reminded of the words of another red-head: "No matter how you tell yourself it's what we all go through, those lines are pretty hard to take when they're staring back at you." Bonnie Raitt. You go, girl, Jean thought, bitterly.
Damn Scott. He'd said that he'd love her no matter what, to the end of time that he didn't care she was older. Very romantic. Very easy to promise when she'd been thirty. But what would he say when she was forty-five and the lines on her face couldn't be hidden any more? Could a thirty-something man at the height of his physical strength but past the height of his libido love a middle-aged woman? She'd lose her legs, too, eventually. Tina Turner, she wasn't.
Damn Scott.
Damn her.
She stepped back from the table finally. "We should all go and let her rest. She'll probably sleep all night."
"Shouldn't she be taken to her own room, then?" Scott asked.
Jean glanced at him but spoke to John Proudstar. "John, would you mind carrying Miss Kills-his-Horse to her room?" She was not about to let Scott carry the girl.
"Sure," John said, shuffling forward to lift the Sioux woman like she weighed nothing at all. Jean didn't look away from Scott the whole time. And he, thankfully, didn't follow the departing pair with his eyes like some love-sick pup. Instead, he stared back at her. He seemed to be frowning slightly, though she couldn't be sure behind the glasses. The professor was watching them both. Ororo wasn't. She floated around the medlab, picking things up and putting them back down. Nerves. The tension in the room was palpable even to a non-telepath, Jean was sure.
"I should get back to my class," Ororo said now, as if seeking permission.
The professor simply nodded and she left. He continued to watch Jean and Scott glare at each other, then shook his head. He was a tactful man and believed in privacy, Jean knew. But he had a responsibility which overbore that. "Deal with it," he said softly to them as he wheeled out. "This cannot be allowed to hurt the team."
He may as well have slapped Scott. Her lover's nose flared and red touched his ears. She knew how much the team meant to him, how much he was determined to preserve it. But after the door closed on the professor, Scott just turned and walked away from her, began Ororo's nervous habit of picking up and putting down miscellaneous objects. He was frowning, his whole posture screaming that he didn't know where to begin. Jean had no idea, either, or she would have begun it a week ago. Telepath or not, the closer one felt to a person, the more one had invested in a relationship, the less one was willing to risk it by talking about unpleasantries. Knowing what she should do, and doing it, weren't the same. But today she was angry, and she was hurt, and she wanted most of all to hurt him back. "Shall I return the ring so you can give it to her?"
He actually started, dropped some surgical implement with a bell-clatter of metal on metal. "What?" The honest surprise in his voice annoyed her. How could he act so shocked?
Propelled by rage, she tugged the engagement ring off her left hand, held it up. "This."
"Jean, what are you talking about?" But it was less question than protest. He didn't really want to hear her.
"What am I talking about? I'm talking about the same goddamn thing this whole goddamn school has been talking about, gossiping about, for weeks! You. Me. Grace Kills-his-Horse."
He had turned his head sideways and was watching her now, bent slightly forward as if trying to get a new angle on the old and familiar. Finally, he moved, walked over to take the ring out of her hand. Her heart thumped once, hard. But then he caught her left hand in both his and spread the fingers, slipped the ring back onto its familiar groove. "You're being melodramatic. This belongs to you." He hesitated. "So does the man who gave it to you."
"Does he?"
"Yes." No hesitation that time.
She looked away from him. "I see how you look at her "
"And I saw how you looked at Logan."
He hadn't even tried to deny her accusation.
"This is not about Logan!"
"Indirectly, it is. You're still with me. He left and you stayed. With me. Love is all about choices. Not feelings, Jeannie."
It was such a thoroughly Scott kind of argument that she nearly spit in his face, in rage. "I don't want your duty."
Startled, he drew back, opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She could feel the turmoil in his head like the distant annoying buzz of a mosquito in a dark room. "What do you want then?"
"I want your love."
He didn't reply to that for a long time, just continued to stare at her. Finally, he said, "You have it. You always did. But like I said, love isn't about feelings. I made a commitment to you."
So rational, so rational. He was always so blasted rational. "Duty," she said again.
"What the hell is wrong with duty?" He was furious now, got right in her face until all she could see were her own eyes reflected red in his glasses. "Maybe what you really want isn't love, Jean. What you really want is a man who's obsessed with you." That said, he turned on his heel and stalked out.
Jean sank down to the floor and just sat there, spinning the ring on her left hand, around and around. She sat a long time. Were his words true? Was that what had attracted her to Logan that he'd fixated on her like a dog to a bitch in heat? Did she like it when men chased her?
Of course she did. What woman didn't? It was flattering. Scott had chased her once, too. Persistent, determined, creative in his strategies and never afraid to look the fool at the outset as long as he didn't look a fool in the end. He'd embarked on a one-man campaign for her heart. She would never forget the night he'd serenaded her a capella on his knees in the dining room in front of the entire school and the professor, too. Had he not been able to sing so well, he'd have looked like an idiot. But he could sing, and knew it. He always knew what he could do. Was that arrogance, if he was right? Or was it just confidence, the same thing that made him a leader? He hadn't cared that he was younger than her, that she had a higher academic degree than he did. He'd wanted her. Prince Charming had ridden to her front gate and set up siege. How could she have turned him down? When, after only six months, he'd gone down on his knee again this time in private with a ring in his hand and a nervous question on his lips, it had seemed the most logical thing in the world to say 'yes.'
But he didn't do those things any more. Her walls had been breached, her citadel brought low. She was conquered. Now he said that he loved her and let his eyes stray to another woman, another potential conquest, and expected her to ignore it. She couldn't. He'd fought once to win her. Now she was going to fight back.
She pushed herself up and removed her lab coat. Shocky with fear, she made her way upstairs.
It was dinner time. She knew she should eat something but wasn't hungry, passed by the dining room and glanced in the door. Ororo sat forlorn at the teacher's table with no Jean, no Scott, no professor, and not even Grace to keep her company. The rest of the room was filled with overly excited students circling Jake O'Dell, John Proudstar and others who had been present when Grace had healed Jake. They were heros by association.
But Grace was the real hero.
Jean went on. What good was a doctor at a school with a mutant healer who pretended to be a secretary? Useless.
Don't be stupid, she scolded herself. There were a hundred things she did that Grace couldn't, wasn't trained for, didn't have the power to do. One regrowth of epidermis and the girl was out for the count. Not very useful in a real emergency. Her regenerative ability wasn't that powerful, certainly less than Logan's. Jean should be ecstatic for young Jake who wouldn't now face life with a badly scarred arm. Doctors didn't compete in the emergency room. They saved lives. But that didn't alter her sense of being badly upstaged. Jean couldn't have done for Jake what Grace had. Not only was the girl honing in on Jean's man, she was honing in on Jean's vocation.
Jean stopped outside the door of the room she shared with Scott. Shared for how much longer? She could hear him inside, playing. The distinctive bass-line from Rush's "Tom Sawyer." He played when he was tense, or angry, or upset. Music relaxed him, or let him express himself in a way he couldn't with words.
She put her hand on the nob, but didn't open the door. After a moment, the music stopped and the door swung inward. His jaw and the hand on the bass neck were both clenched tightly. "How did you know I was out here?" she asked. He wasn't the telepath.
"Your heels. I heard them stop."
"Over the music?"
He shrugged with one shoulder, moved aside to let her enter and slipped the Wal off, set it back in its stand. She stopped inside the door. She wasn't angry any more; she was scared. "Scott "
"I am obsessed with you, you know," he interrupted. He wasn't looking at her; he was messing with the bass strap. Such fine hands with their long fingers. Light from the desk lamp fell soft on his hair and cut chiseled lines under sharp cheekbones. "I've been obsessed with you since the first time I saw you. You barely knew I existed then."
"I knew you existed. But you were only eighteen."
He glanced around at her. "I did everything in my power just to get you to smile at me."
"You tried harder than you needed. I guess you could say I was predisposed." She tried to smile for him now but it felt fake, plastered on her face like those of the beauty queens on parade floats. She gave up, added, "It was different when you came back from California. You weren't a kid any more. And you were . . . persistent."
"Is that why you finally said 'yes'? Because I asked you twenty times first?"
"Maybe I said 'yes' because I have a soft spot for Sting. You did a wonderful imitation in the dining room."
He smiled faintly, sang, "To have you with me I would swim the seven seas, to have you as my guide and my light. My love is a flame that burns in your name. We'll be together. We'll be together tonight."
She approached him, laid a palm on his chest over his heart, stared at the hand, not his face. "Is your love still a flame?"
"Always."
She looked up finally, but his eyes were forever hidden to her. She couldn't read them, only his voice. Or his mind. But she was afraid to touch his mind, afraid of what truth she might find there. "We didn't have a lot of choices, though, did we, back then? There weren't many of us, and for a mutant, getting a date on Saturday night "
"I had choices at Berkeley, Jean. Clarice, for one."
She blinked. She'd almost forgotten that. But it had been Berkeley, after all bastion of California liberalism. Some of the women had found him fascinating, as much because he was a mutant as because he was handsome. Scott didn't do celebacy well. He didn't have high needs, but he did have pressing ones. She and he hadn't talked much about his affairs at Berkeley, but she knew very well that he'd had sex now and then, maybe a little more than 'now and then.' The one time she'd visited him out there, she'd seen how the girls looked at him, and hadn't liked it. That had been the first time she'd realized that what she felt qualified as more than a 'big sister' ought to feel.
"But I only really wanted you," he finished now. "Only, ever you. See?" He tilted his head. "Obsession."
She brought up her other hand, slid both over his shoulders and rubbed her thumbs across his collarbones. Such broad shoulders to bear up the professor's dream. He was their Atlas. She let her right hand move to his face, stroke his cheek. "You're so strong, and so beautiful."
"So are you. Beautiful."
"For an older woman."
"For a woman period. Don't start that, Jeannie. You know I've never cared." He turned his head to kiss her palm, then leaned in to reach her mouth. She undid his shirt as they kissed, and he undid hers. His hands found her breasts, rubbed the nipples, and she sucked in breath.
"Scott . . . . "
He didn't answer. He didn't like to talk during sex, didn't like to make any sound at all. Even without his glasses, his face could be so blank right up until he came. The only way she knew if he liked something was to read it out of his mind. He had to be in control. Every minute.
Now, he drew her over to the bed and laid her down on it, got the rest of her clothes off, then his own. She lay passive the whole while, her eyes closed, let him explore her body with his fingers and lips. He'd taken off his glasses so he was blind. The first few times, he'd been frightened of that, afraid he might blink in the heat of the moment. But she'd known better. With Scott, there never was a 'heat of the moment.' Control again. Always in control. Once she'd needed to see his naked face; now, she needed something else. She sat up suddenly and opened her own eyes, almost hit him in the chin. "Wha?'
"My turn. Lay down."
He didn't protest, did as she had ordered. She straddled him, right over his naked hips so that the heat of her inner folds enveloped his erection. He made no sound but his eyes squeezed just slightly, once. Otherwise, his face was a mask. And so young. He always looked so young without his glasses, younger than he really was. She leaned over him so that her nipples brushed his chest, breathed gently against his mouth and drew her tongue along his upper lip. Teasing. He still didn't say anything, but his hands had come up to her back, pulling her against him, trying to kiss her back. "No," she whispered. "Still my turn." He subsided.
From the nightstand, she took his sleepband and slipped it on his face. "I don't need that " he began.
"Shhhh. You might before I'm done with you."
"Jean "
"Shhh." She would make him lose control tonight. This was war and she intended to win him back.
She drew her lips over his sculpted chin, down his neck past the hollow of his throat, across his chest to a nipple, bit it. That got a noise, albeit a small one. Then down, down to the bellybutton. She lapped that and left it, followed the line of hair. But she didn't stop at his erection. She kissed around it to the hollow of his hip. He squirmed a little now, but still said nothing. She licked his milky inner thigh, then the brown scrotum, got hair in her mouth and had to spit it out. She brought the tip of her tongue to the base of his cock, drew it up the big vein to the ring of the head, flicked that. He drew in breath between his teeth, sharply, and put a hand on her head, stroked her hair.
But this wasn't going to get her what she wanted. She knew all too well the extent of his control; it would take more, take something new. There were advantages to being a doctor; she knew the human body very well, and Scott wasn't the only one who hadn't pursued celibacy in college. Reaching down between her legs, she used her own lubrication to wet a finger, then slid it into his anus at the same time she took his cock in her mouth. It startled him and he gasped at the feel of being invaded and swallowed at once, then gasped again when her finger found his prostate. His hands gripped her hair. He tried to be so gentle but she didn't want gentle all the time, like a diet of vanilla pudding. She wasn't glass. She massaged his prostate and sucked hard at his cock. He was making noises she'd never from him in the almost three years of their relationship.
Abruptly she rolled away, left him high and dry. He actually pulled his knees up and hissed through his teeth. He looked very vulnerable. She moved up beside him and went back to work, determined to wring sound from him, take away his control tonight. She wanted to hear him whimper for her like she did for him. She used her telepathy to gauge how close he was to orgasm, then she'd stop cold, pull away. Torture, of a kind. She enjoyed it immensely, the power of it. After half an hour, she had him wound so tightly that he actually swore at her when she pulled away yet again. She was wound tight herself. Time to end it. Pushing him down on his back a final time, she straddled him and lifted his erection until it just touched the lips of her vagina. "Tell me you want me."
"Jean "
"Beg for me."
"I don't like those kinds of games. You know that!"
"Beg or I'll stay like this."
"Dammit!"
"Beg."
"All right. Please."
"That's begging?"
"What do you want?"
"I want to know that you want me."
"I'd think it pretty damn obvious!"
She bent to blow across his ear, lick the point of his jaw, move her body down on his cock just enough for him to feel wet pressure on the sensitive head.
"God, Jean!"
"Tell me you want me."
"I want you!"
She lowered herself finally, arched her back up and away. He gasped. She felt his hands move from her hips up her torso to her breasts, massage them. He wasn't gentle now. She raised up on him, then pounded down against his hips so hard that it made the bed rock. Did it again. And again. The fourth time she stopped when she'd reached the apex. "Tell me that you want me."
"I want you." His voice actually broke. "I want you."
She laughed a little and bent to bury her face against his neck, bit hard, made him cry out. Their bodies kept going. Every time they came together it sparked fire at her center and she had her eyes shut as tightly as he ever did, gasping, pushing herself to ignite that spark. "Scott." She said it over and over with her lips and her mind, made his name a mantra. He wasn't saying anything even that coherent.
But he was making noise. Lots of it.
They didn't come together. They did manage to come close though, slamming into each other so hard she knew she'd be bruised tomorrow. Right now, she didn't care. It hurt good. Then he arched his back, head pushed against his pillow, neck extended, teeth gritted. He was coming in jerky motions and animal-over-its-border sounds that she hadn't known he could make. The wonder of it nearly undid her own crest. What power. She could do this to him. She had the power to do this to him. Then she forgot it as the flint spark between her legs flowered, and she screamed.
Much later, she woke to peer, groggy, at the clock by her bedside. 1:30, it read. Scott was still hard asleep on his half of the bed, belly down, band over his eyes, mouth open and drooling a little on his pillow. The light on the desk had never been turned off. Rising, she found her plush robe and put it on, then padded into the bathroom, cleaned herself up. Dry semen on her inner thighs reminded her abruptly of what they hadn't remembered earlier, and should have. They'd never stopped for him to put on a condom. Her hand with the washcloth paused. "Damn." Condoms, used properly, were a highly effective form of birth control. He had always used them properly. He always did everything properly. Until tonight.
She went back to washing up. No use in crying over spilt milk. Granted that once was all it took, but statistically speaking, the chances of this 'once' resulting in a pregnancy were very slim.
The next afternoon though, she found a small bit of clear mucus in the seat of her underpants the discharge which she and a handful of other lucky women could count on each month on the day they were fertile. She decided then that, statistically speaking, Russian Roulette seemed like a good gamble, too. Until the one time a bullet lay in the chamber.
Or, to put it more positively, with this kind of luck, she should have played the lottery yesterday.
"Oh, Scott," she whispered softly. "Oh, shit."
She avoided him, and the professor, the rest of that day. She didn't know what to do tell him or not? Prepare him or not? Maybe she was worrying over nothing, but she had a bad feeling about this.
He didn't want a child. Not now. He'd made that clear. Eventually, yes, and he knew she couldn't wait forever. But he wasn't ready to be a father just yet and had told her so. His relationship with his own father had been too ambiguous, even before his mutation. Strong-willed and stubborn, he'd seemed destined to clash with the strict and domineering Major Christopher Summers.
Like father, like son. At least she knew from where he got that damn need to control.
Now, she watched him through a second-story window, playing on the ball court with the boys. He shouldn't be afraid of fatherhood. He didn't do to these kids what his own father had done to him he didn't make them feel like failures. He pushed them, he challenged them, but he gave them confidence in themselves to reach the goals he set. So they did. Sometimes strict was good, secure. They knew where his lines lay. And she'd never once heard him call any of them 'idiot,' which was more than she could say for what she'd heard in his memory from the lips of his own father.
Maybe not like father, like son.
She put up one hand to the window glass and with the other, touched her abdomen. For no particular reason, she hoped this child, if there was one, would be a boy, a boy with eyes like his father's summer-sky eyes which she had never seen except in pictures from before.
Even while she watched, Grace Kills-his-Horse strolled across the yard arm in arm with Rogue, like sisters, if one could ignore the racial differences. Distracted, Bobby paused long enough for Warren to slip past his guard and slap the ball away. Teammates cheered or jeered, depending; she could hear it even from the window. But her eyes weren't on Bobby. Scott had raised up, too, hands on hips to say something, presumably to Bobby but that wasn't the direction of his gaze. He must have thought the sunglasses hid it, but the angle of his head was just a little off. He was watching Grace.
Jean's hand on the glass clenched shut.
"Ororo?"
Ororo was lounging on the couch in the den, reading a book; she looked around. Her face was calm as always, black eyes startling under the white hair. Then she smiled. "Want a piece of the couch?"
Jean shook her head, tried to smile without much success. At least Scott wasn't around. But then, after yet another argument with him that morning, she'd made sure he wouldn't be. She came closer, set a hand on the back of the leather, said softly. "Could we go for a walk. I . . . need someone to talk to."
Ororo's surprise was transparent. The two of them were friends, but only friends. Scott had always been Jean's confidant, or the professor. Jean's life and Ororo's had been so different, they had little in common besides their mutations and their devotion to the professor's dream.
But for once in her life, she needed to talk to a woman. An adult woman.
"Sure," Ororo said now, slipping in a bookmark and standing. She was dressed in black leather pants and a clingy lime sweater which shade should have looked ridiculous but didn't next to her cocoa skin and ice hair. Jean felt like a frump. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
Who else are you going to talk to?, she asked herself. Grace?
"Let's go," Ororo said and headed for the front door.
It was a Sunday afternoon and the sun was glorious, the hardwood on the hills decked out in full fall dress. Kids enjoyed their day off. She saw Jake O'Dell, Warren Worthington and John Proudstar tossing a frisbee. It had been three weeks since Jake's accident, since Jean's fight with Scott, and since their make up afterward.
Jean didn't say anything to Ororo until they were well away from the rest of the students, out near the pasture where the horses grazed, including the black-bay that belonged to Scott. Seeing Jean, the bay trotted over to nose her flannel shirt, looking for a treat. She scratched him between the ears. "Sorry lardbutt, I didn't plan on coming this way so I didn't bring anything for you." Almost as if he could understand, he sighed in a gust of grass-sweet breath and trotted away.
"So?" Ororo prompted finally, pushed herself up to sit on the top of the wooden fence rail.
Jean pulled a small white plastic strip out of her pocket and handed it up to Ororo, who took it with a frown. "What is this?"
"Pregnancy test," Jean replied.
Ororo's eyes widened and she turned it so that she could read the results, though she must have guessed what the results would be or there wouldn't have been a reason for Jean to be out here talking to her. Her lips curled up. "Congratulations."
Jean leaned into the fence and put her face in her arms, shook her head. Tension from the past several weeks burst up and out like a volcano; she sobbed once, hard. "He doesn't want it."
The fence rocked as Ororo hopped down to put arms around Jean's shoulders, hugging her tight. "Fuck him! Is that why I didn't see him at lunch?"
Jean raised up, wiped her eyes. "No. I haven't even told him yet. We haven't . . . been talking easily of late. But I know he doesn't want a baby."
"How do you know?"
"He told me. Before." She looked down at her hands. "It's not like we haven't discussed children."
"He doesn't want them at all?"
"Oh, he wants them. Just not now."
"Well, you are not married yet."
"It's more than that. He's not ready. So he says."
"He has, what eight months? to get ready."
"Nine, really. Thirty-seven weeks and counting. A normal pregnancy takes forty weeks."
Ororo might not teach math, but she could add and subtract. She had to guess when Jean had gotten pregnant. Now, she rubbed Jean's back. "How are you feeling? Any morning sickness?"
"Not yet. Nothing yet."
"When are you going to tell him?"
"I don't know. Maybe I won't have to."
"Why?" Ororo seemed genuinely surprised. "You're not planning on keeping it?"
Jean had considered that option, but now just shook her head. "I meant that not every pregnancy goes to term; about half of all fertilizations terminate spontaneously. Usually in the first week or so, but still. Three weeks isn't that long."
Hand still on Jean's back, Ororo asked, "Do you want this baby?"
"I don't know, Ro. I don't know. I didn't mean for this to happen. It was an accident."
"You must tell him."
"He's going to be angry."
"Maybe. But you must tell him anyway. It is his child, too. And he might surprise you. He will make a good father."
Jean sighed. "I know he will. That's not what worries me." She sighed again. "I'll tell him. Tonight. If you hear lots of shouting coming from our room after supper, you'll know why." She smiled ruefully.
"It might be shouting in glee."
"Somehow, I doubt it."
"Pessimist. Tell him and find out."
"I will."
And Jean did fully intend to tell him.
Except that Logan came back that same afternoon.