Scott Summers (seesred) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2012-12-17 19:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, jean grey / phoenix (movie), scott summers / cyclops (movie) |
Who: Scott Summers & Jean Grey (movies)
When: December 17, 2012; evening
Where: Jean’s apartment
What: Scott and Jean reunite, aaaw.
Rating: Low!
Everything was tuned out after the agent spoke her name. It wasn’t intentional. Not really. The woman just didn’t understand, and he didn’t realize he was telling her that aloud until a void of silence pulled him back what had been the present. “What’s been months?” the agent had asked after nothing but the ticking of a simple, mass-produced wall clock ate up the last eight seconds that passed. Scott’s brow worked upward just slightly behind ruby quartz lenses. “What don’t I understand?” she furthered. He couldn’t put it to words, but that was a mixture of things. Lack of wanting to with a stranger. The being rattled up by what he’d been informed was the Tesseract. Struggling to discern if maybe he’d just heard wrong. Fortunately, that had been the end of the informational session. Fortunately, he was able to pry out of the office without much trouble received for wanting to beat a hasty exit. It was a vague answer given that Jean Grey was someone he knew -- a teammate he needed to check in with. There had been a room assignment supplied to him personally, but he shoved it to the back of his mind, instead repeating another number: 1204. 1204, 1204, 1204 because it was easier than letting his mind fray with wondering if this was real. 1204, 1204 as the elevator’s doors closed, opened, and he took the few mechanical steps to the door reading that number. His fist raised, hesitated in front of the surface. Then it lowered. There was a cliff he was standing on and looking down. If someone else answered... if he was just being guided by delusions... Well. Maybe that would just be like the last four months carrying on their unforgiving trend. Her sessions with Xavier were progressing well enough, but Jean's powers were still a stone skittering across a water's surface - unpredictable in their reach and ripple effect. Her precarious position here didn't help speed up the process, but at least she didn't feel quite so out of control anymore. Unfortunately, that didn't stop the occasional headache from cropping up. Jean set aside some work for the ESD program she was compiling, mostly to stay busy, and pressed the bridge of her nose between her fingertips. A whisper of a thought reached her mind - 1204, 1204, 1204 - and her gaze shot to the door, wide and startled. Worse, it was unbearably hopefully. Because the thought felt of Scott, her Scott, and it was her room number echoing in her head, after all. Slowly standing, Jean crossed to the door with a hesitance that unknowingly matched the man on the other side of it. She started to reach out with her mind, but withdrew nervously. With warnings about planet destruction still haunting her, excessive control of her powers was inevitable. Instead, she turned the knob and swung open the door. The relief that swept through her at the sight of him was instantaneous and overwhelming. "Scott..." There was any hesitation. Jean covered the short distance between them and wrapped her arms, maybe a bit too tightly, around his shoulders. It was impossible to brace for this or steel his nerves in preparation. The door had opened long before Scott had any semblance of clarity to his scattered thoughts. There was hope mingling with fear mingling with pure exhaustion from what had become days strung together by a necessity to keep functioning. And responsibility: his duty to the school, to the students, to Xavier -- although even that had started to disintegrate. Those thoughts were pulled into the whirlwind that struck when the shadow cast beneath him by the overhead light angled away -- the daylight streaming into 1204’s interior bleeding out into the hall -- then was joined by a second silhouetted form. He didn’t have to look up. There was a sense -- inexplicable as it was -- in that brief window between the door opening and her voice, that it was okay. There wouldn’t be a stranger greeting him, and there wouldn’t be anything but Jean’s face actually there instead of the image burned into his memory. But not having to look up didn’t mean anything because he couldn’t have torn his eyes away from the ground any faster. And it was okay. Jean standing there. Jean stepping in. Jean hugging him. His arms raised while his mind tried to navigate to safe port, but his hands came to rest around her: gently at first, and then with a desperation to just feel her presence. “Jean. I...” His voice gave out, but it was barely there in the first place. Her telepathy surged painfully as his grip tightened. Even if his emotional state hadn't been apparent enough at his touch, she got a full dose of it from his mind. Jean had suspected, of course. That she wouldn't survive the events at the dam was a possibility she'd accepted before she'd even stepped out of the jet. But the truth of it, laid bare in his thoughts, made her heart ache for him. Her face crumpled where it was pressed against the side of his neck and she squeezed just a little tighter. "Hey, hey," she murmured gently. Careful of his glasses, Jean pulled back enough to cradle his face in her hands. "I'm okay. I'm here. It's okay." While that wasn't entirely true - they were ripped from their world, their 'family', everything they knew - it was all she could think to say. The urge was there to apologize, for putting him through such pain, but she knew she would make the same decision again if she had to, so it seemed wrong somehow. Instead, she kissed him, and tried to infuse as much comfort into the act as she could. Scott nodded, more out of instinct than because her words were reaching him. Her voice was a guiding beacon just as much as the touch of her fingers at the sides of his face. It was apparent that his expression was fighting to keep steady with a small smile just as much as he was trying to steady his hands over hers. Still, whatever brought them both here, he knew he could trust that this was real. Words weren’t happening. A culmination of the relief that crashed ashore and just needing that second longer before even trying to phrase anything meant that her lips met a reassuring return. It didn’t matter that they were out in the hall. It didn’t matter about anything save for the fact that she was as real and living as the warm hands beneath his. As he broke away, his voice was stronger. “How long have you been here?” An attempt at a reassuring smile was made, and it was mostly successful. His thoughts were still rattling around in her head, though, so Jean took a deep breath and released it slowly, trying to center herself. "Not long, about a week." The realization that this was all happening doors away from the other Scott's room, not to mention Logan’s, made Jean grimace and she pulled at his arm as she stepped backwards through her door. "There's a lot I should probably tell you, but right now, I'm just glad you're here. Come inside and sit down. You look..." Awful was the word that came to mind first. Haggard, like he hadn't a decent night's sleep in ages. "...like you could use some rest," she finished lamely. A week wasn’t so bad. There was an underlying worry that maybe it had been longer, not that he could have done anything about it, but... well, that was Scott. If his shoulders weren’t weighted in some manner, then the world wasn’t spinning. But Jean’s tug and invitation inside didn’t need repeating. Scott moved out of the hall, hand gripping the door behind him until it shut them both off from the rest of the building. It felt quieter inside, despite that the hall hadn’t been noisy in any regard, and there was gratitude spared for that much. The foreign surroundings were still gifting them privacy. “They gave me a briefing. I...” He breathed out, realizing he was still standing in the entry area. “I’ll be fine,” was the choice of phrase Scott gave as he stepped inward some more, seeking out a place they could both sit. The sofa within looked good enough. His hand clasped hers as he passed her by, crossing the distance towards it. “I will. What about you? Are you all right?” "I'm fine, Scott. Really," Jean insisted quietly, because the truth was complicated and he had enough to deal with right now. Besides, she was on her way to fine and she had to cling to that or she'd spend too much time wallowing in her own thoughts. She'd give him the darker update later, when he'd had time to settle in and get some rest. Taking a sideways seat, she pulled her legs up beneath her and propped her elbow on the back of couch. "But I have to say the briefing really doesn't cover the half of it. Not that I blame them. There's too many people here and they have to be overworked by now. Did they mention there's another you here?" she asked with a lift of her eyebrows and a twitch of a grim smile. "I wasn't going to get into that, but I'd hate for you to find out by surprise. It was strange enough for me. I can't imagine what'll it'll be like for you.” He didn’t sit back. It was a forward perch, towards Jean, as if he couldn’t quite relax enough despite her insisting that she was just fine. Never mind the wear the months had put on him; Scott all-too-easy shoved himself aside for her, it didn’t matter if she was alive, or... The thought was pressed back again, just as it was, unfinished. “I heard Logan was here,” he answered, shaking his head and trying to focus on Jean’s words more than Jean herself. His hand instinctively reached for one of hers. “Maybe they said it, but I cut them off.” Because nothing really mattered as much as getting himself here. His brow furrowed under the frame of his glasses. “What do you mean by that?” Turning her hand to link her fingers through his, Jean pulled their clasped hands to rest on her leg. He still looked so out of sorts, and she couldn't think how to put him at ease. Talking about their alternative lives probably wasn't the best way of going about it, but now that she'd brought the subject up, she had to at least clarify. "Logan isn't our--isn't the Logan we know. There are a number of X-Men here, ones we know and ones we don't. They're all from a handful of alternate realities where some things are the same and...some things are very different. One of them is a you that looks like a different person altogether." That seemed tactful and vague enough to not add to his stress, so she offered a small smile and lifted his hand to press her cheek against it. "It's a bit of a mess, but we can deal with later, okay? Are you hungry? Thirsty? Maybe you just need some sleep?" He folded his fingers around hers, maybe holding on just a little too tight for comfort’s sake, but there was a certain fear that if he didn’t anchor himself, or her for that matter, that this would wash away like it was only a dream. Too many times had other mutants snuck into people’s heads and played cruel games. There was a hopefulness that this wasn’t one, but it was so hard to ever be sure. If Scott risked closing his eyes, would he open them to Jean again or an empty bed? The information was filed away. Another Logan. Other X-Men. They could all wait, Scott agreed with that. His mouth twisted upward into a small, lost smile. In the wake of everything, the offer on the table was something like being invited to dinner. It had such an ordinariness to it that he couldn’t help a mild, half-hearted note of laughter, especially given the context of everything else. “I...” He looked around the apartment, vaguely noting that this was where she had been living for about a week. It was surreal at best. “Don’t know. It’s dinner time, isn’t it?” It was a gut feeling by the dimming light outside. Jean smiled, because even that half-hearted little sound was an improvement. “It is. If you want it to be. I’ll admit...” she glanced towards the kitchen and winced, “ ...I haven’t really done much grocery shopping. But we could order some takeout. Plenty of options in the area.” Squeezing his hand, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. Every motion was an attempt at reinforcement - maybe they were in a crazy place, and maybe it wasn’t going to be easy here, but they were together and that was better than the alternatives. And, selfishly, she was glad the feeling of being a slightly unwelcome outsider would be less of a concern with Scott around. “It’s up to you, Scott. But after that, I’m insisting on you getting some sleep.” Instinct was to just nod. Whatever Jean wanted was good enough for him -- as long as they weren’t splitting apart. It reminded Scott that he had a room assignment of his own, but that was secondary to right about a thousand other thoughts in that moment. Her kiss elicited another upward shift of his mouth, the smile less lost and more certain. “We’ll order out. I have a feeling there’s a lot I need to hear.” He looked down at their conjoined hands. “Sleep after that.” If he even could. "Sounds like a deal, Summers." Jean reached her free hand to ruffle her fingertips over the top of his hair - it looked longer which only made her frown at the very real possibility that some time had passed since she'd "left". That worrisome thought was pushed aside as she nodded towards the dining room. "I'll go get the menus I've collected this week and be right back. You...stay put." The statement came out a bit more heavy than intended, but she didn't figure that was all too surprising. He wasn't the only one feeling protective and maybe a bit clingy. Maybe it had something to do with a telepath named Emma Frost. Or maybe it was just being glad to see him. Either way, she wasn't about to dissect anything. Scott was here. Everything else could wait. |