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Down Under	By : DrunkenScotsman Category: X-Men - Animated Series (all) > Het - Male/Female Views: 6656 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the various incarnations of the X-Men, or any characters appearing in any of their titles appearing herein. I make no money writing this.

Chapter List
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Chapter 12: Comet Pulled From Orbit

Above her, the open sky stretches to eternity, crisply and cleanly blue, the truest blue she can imagine. Rugged hillocks clad in rich green rise to brush, however fleetingly, the soaring sky. The surface of the water mirrors perfectly, and she wonders which is real and which reflection.

I’m on a boat, she notes. Why am I on a boat?

Disconnect abounds. She relives, yet she watches as if from a great distance. She panics, turns, sees.

He is here.

Of course he is. Where else would he be?

He approaches. He opens his arms. She leaps. He catches.

Beaming, they kiss. She holds him as though she will never let go. Joy permeates her.

She feels… whole.

He carries her below. She feels she floats. Excitement permeates her.

What the hell is going on here?

Clothes depart bodies like the seeds of wind-blown dandelions. He lays her down. He cradles her head and touches her body. She touches him and loves every minute detail.

“Alaska is incredible,” she murmurs, “and so are you. Thank you for sharing both with me.”

Alaska? When did I go to…?

He whispers, “I love you, Jean, my one and only.”

“I love you too, my one and only,” she replies. She kisses him again, and again, and again. Nervousness permeates her.

Oh… this… of course…

He kindly prevents her from waiting much more. His entry is smooth, confident, because she is beyond ready, and they both know it. She clings to him as though she will never let go.

They mate. They couple. They experience intercourse. They move together, dance together in that most ancient of human dances. They make love.

“Oh God,” she moans. “It’s wonderful!”

My God – it is wonderful. I feel… whole.

The dance continues. She screams, unconcerned about volume, since her only audience is the Alaskan wildlife. Pleasure permeates her.

Pleasure permeates them both. She knows this, as surely as she knows her own name, as she knows the sun warms the earth, as she knows her senior prom suffered from the endemic fashion sense of the late 80’s. She looks at her partner, and she sees him – not just his handsome face, not just his rugged body, but all of him. His thoughts, his gnawing doubts, his loftiest aspirations – all lie bare before her vision. She knows – no, she feels – that she lies just as bare before him.

They are thoroughly, unequivocally, irrevocably naked for each other, and they are not ashamed. Definition blurs. Dissolution occurs.

The two of them are one now. They are more one than any two in the history of twos and ones. All others had remained two, though they purported to become one. The two of them here, on this boat off the shores of Alaska, are one now – now, and forever.

They are intimate. This is intimacy.

“Is this… supposed to happen?” asks one.

“I don’t know,” answers the other. “It’s strange.”

“Frightening?” asks s/he.

“Not at all,” s/he replies, “just… right.”

They laugh. All they can do is laugh. Climax, when it occurs, seems unimportant.

Little else matters to them, for they are intimate. They are changed – irrefutably, irrevocably, immutably forged together. Two now are one, in body, mind, heart, soul.

The oneness begins to fade into two again. The shared sensations fade – image, sound, scent, flavor, touch. The shared emotions fade into mere surfaces. Even the surfaces slowly dissolve.

Lazily Jean rolled toward the man sharing her bed. The memory of her wedding night with Scott left her feeling frisky, even needy. The leftover sensations of orgasm and intimacy roiled through her veins like liquid flame, and she determined to recapture them…

… until she came face-to-face with a still-sleeping St. John.

Uncomfortable moments passed while her brain bridged the disconnect between the emotional purity of her dream-memory and the face-slapping, gut-punching reality before her, her mood utterly slain. Jean sat up slowly, the thin sheet falling away to show that she remained unclothed, and slipped out of the bed gingerly, hoping her host would remain asleep. En route to the bathroom, Jean gathered her wantonly-discarded clothing. The flat’s windows glowed faintly with pre-dawn gloaming.

Once inside, she didn’t dress right away. Instead she ran the faucet and splashed her face a few times with the chilly water. How did I get to this point? she wondered. Time for some self-analysis.

St. John was a decent fellow – handsome, witty, talented, a fellow mutant. More importantly for her, he wasn’t a villain or even a sleazebag. Something stuck in Jean’s metaphorical craw. So that’s all that’s required to get in my pants. When did I lower my standards?

Relax, it was just sex, argued another part of Jean’s mind. You had an itch; he was willing to help you scratch it. It’s called a summer fling. You know, one of those things you never let yourself do growing up.

Jean splashed herself again. “For good reason,” she mouthed. “I was waiting, and that night on the boat was worth the wait.”

Still, replied her devil’s advocate, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with a one-night stand when you’re a free woman. You were honest with St. John about what you wanted – just sex, nothing more.

Jean shook her head. “Exactly – it was just sex. I’m not about ‘just sex.’ I want sex to mean something. That’s one of my core beliefs,” she realized, “and I violated it last night.”

Correction – was one of your core beliefs, snarked the dissenter. You died, remember? Not only did death do its job in the parting department, resurrection gave you a second chance, a clean slate, a new lease on life. Yours is a unique opportunity to start fresh, to reinvent yourself, because you were reborn.

“That is partly why I came here,” she admitted, “to get away from the fragmented life I left behind, the rebuilding of fractured lives.” Jean smiled. “I guess cutting loose a little can be part of the new Jean Grey.”

That also means cutting loose from your leftover feelings for Scott. He’s in the past now, correct?

Jean’s brow furrowed; she was unsure where that last came from. The new internal voice was softer, less snarky, but still hers. A different part of her mind was joining the argument, it seemed.

“N-No… I think we’ll always be part of each other’s lives,” she protested. “Maybe we weren’t really meant to be together. Maybe that’s the hidden lesson from the Phoenix.”

The dream-memory last night suggests otherwise, came the thinning-patience reply. Only while in love with our partner did we experience intimacy. We fused with Scott, in ways that only telepathy and true love could permit.

“The tryst with St. John did feel a bit… mechanical,” Jean mused, “pleasurable, but only on a physical level.”

Exactly – it was a pale shadow of what we felt with Scott.

Jean sighed, but this still, small voice wasn’t finished yet.

Further, while we may not have cheated on Scott in the legal sense, the news of what happened last night will still hurt him terribly – and we have to tell him if we want any chance of rebuilding that intimacy. We might be able to begin life anew, but he doesn’t have that luxury. He never let go of us; he never gave up on us. That’s just who he is.

“I wasn’t dead long,” she murmured in quiet frustration. “He barely left the denial stage, much less make it to acceptance.”

Does that justify everything that’s transpired on this trip?

Jean let the question hang in the ether for a long, long moment. She clung to the edge of the counter as though her life depended on it. Her knees were rubber.

The snarky voice screamed, There was no legitimate reason not to enjoy the company and skill of our willing partner! We were taking back our sexuality, from those slimeballs who used us!

The softer voice sighed. We used St. John – a near-stranger, no less – for our own gratification. How is what we did any different from Mastermind’s abuses?

Besides the lack of illusions or other telepathic manipulation?

“Enough!” Jean shouted. She’d reached her limit, her hands white and shaking with fury. “I will not drive myself crazy like this!”

For the first time since she awoke, she faced herself in the mirror. In fact, she stared herself down. No tears stained her cheeks. Jean breathed deeply, a nearly-alien feeling of certainty washing over her.

“I slept with a man I hardly know on a whim. It was an effort to reclaim my sexuality after others had abused me. It was unwise, straying too close to the behavior of the Dark Phoenix. I will not regret the experience, but now it's time for Jean to control Jean."

Jean smiled. That was cleansing, she noted. But I’m not quite done.

“I am still emotionally tied to Scott, if not still in love with him. I will not hide from this indiscretion. If he can forgive me, we will rebuild our lives… together.”

Jean straightened to her full height, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She determined to cut short her vacation and return home as soon as possible, once she made the arrangements with the airport. As she dressed, she smoothed out the wrinkles of her clothing.

For the first time since her resurrection, she felt… whole.

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A/N: Sorry for the extended wait since last chapter. This semester's looking particularly busy for me, so I don't know how often I'll be able to update for the foreseeable future. I hope that this chapter was enjoyable to all my readers, and that it explains Jean's motivations for her previous actions to a satisfactory degree.

Thanks to my reviewers for your feedback; it's always appreciated and welcome. I'll admit to a perverse glee that some of you are actually arguing about it - that's a level of care I've never experienced regarding my work.
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