Unspoken: Seven Blue Stones

Seven Blue Stones
by Minisinoo

Rating: Some language

Summary: Scott takes a leap of faith

Timeline: After "An Impassioned Defense" and "Unpredictable"; concurrent with Shana's "Traumas"

Notes: All right; I watched the season premiere of Ally McBeal tonight, with Marsden as the firm's new lawyer. I got suitably inspired. ;> That big grin is just SO darn cute. How could any woman resist an earnest, grinning Scott? This came out in first person; Scott insisted on talking. ;> As per the novelization, his parents are still living, and as per comic canon, Chris Summers was a test pilot for the USAF. The thematic mugs are for Jenn, the REMF reference is for Lelia, and thanks to Shaz, who saw this literally hot off the press in a fast and furious email chat. We were writing at the same time.

Date: October 30, 2001

When I was ten years old, I found seven perfect blue stones in a stream bed on the Korean base where my father spent a year's duty assignment. I hated that year -- everything was so alien: the food, the customs, the clothing, even the night sky. To this day, I can't stand the smell of kim-chee. (Then again, who can?) Since Dad was a test pilot, he'd be gone for weeks or months at a time, leaving Mom at home alone with Alex and me. And as most of his job was highly classified, he couldn't even tell us where he was. Out flying Blackbirds on spy missions probably. He still hasn't told me the half of it. Not that we talk much these days, and he doesn't know that I fly the same plane -- albeit modified into next year -- that he did. If he ever found out, he'd probably shit pinecones and then crawl up REMF ass until he found out how Xavier had acquired an SR-71 in the first place. (REMF equals 'rear echelon motherfuckers.' Needless to say, real soldiers don't think much of the chairborne rangers.)

But I'd like to think that maybe, just maybe, he'd be proud of me, too -- proud of what I do. It was my father who raised me to believe that protecting people, even at the risk of my own life, is the highest calling that a person could have.

But that's neither here nor there. Back to the stones. I'd never seen anything quite like them -- as blue as a robin's egg, as blue as my eyes -- and no bigger than my thumbnail. All the same size; all the same flat oval shape, worn water-smooth. With that typical quasi-magical thinking of kids, I'd decided they were meant just for me. Better than a rabbit's foot. I'd carried them in my pocket for the rest of that awful, awkward, lonely year -- never lost a one -- and when we returned to the US at the end of it to move to Offut outside Omaha (headquarters for the USAF Strategic Air Command), I naturally took my stones with me. And I got them as far as US Customs, where I made the foolish mistake of being honest about what was in my pockets and showing them to the customs agent. The stones were confiscated -- which baffles me now, because they were neither animal nor plant material, but I suppose the custom's officer was anal retentive. (I should find that funny, but don't. I'm a self-confessed control freak, yet I have a little common sense about it all.)

My mother might have put up a fuss, argued to let me keep my stones -- she'd never lacked for assertiveness -- but my little brother Alex had been a monster for most of the twelve hour trip back, my father wasn't with us, and Mom had just been too tired and frazzled to argue it out with a customs agent over seven 'worthless' stones, however pretty they might be.

"You can get new ones, Scotty," she'd said, and dragged me away. But of course, I never did find new ones like those, though I've looked ever since. Some people hunt for four-leaf clovers, I check the edges of lakes and stream beds for blue stones. And I don't think I've ever wholly forgiven my mother, but I'm older now, and occasionally worn out at day's end from the whining of adolescents in crisis, so I understand why she carted me off that long-ago afternoon.

What did I learn from my little international incident? That parents make mistakes because they're only human, and that the occasional white lie might be a lot less trouble than telling the truth -- though I don't share that tidbit with my students. And I still have an almost pathological need to tell it like it is even if that doesn't necessarily win friends and influence people.

But most of all, I learned that seven blue stones are rare, and you don't give up on something like that without a fight.

***

I could never claim to be a class-act lady killer, but the dog did know a few tricks. On the way to Warren's apartment, I dropped by the local World Market to pick up a package of glass beads -- the flat, shiny kind used in interior decorating or handed out as "Dragon Tears" at those Ren Faires to which Marie had dragged me every summer of our liason. She could wear gloves there without attracting notice. Anyway, I got the beads -- blue the package said -- and a box of twelve imported champagne truffles in individually-wrapped gold foil. Then I dropped by a florist for a special selection of flowers: yellow iris, lily of the valley, fern, and red and white roses with the thorns removed.

This floral and candy artillery in tow, I stopped first at the corner coffee shop located in the bottom floor retail section of Warren's building. I asked the counter help to hold the flowers for me, and to hold a table at the rear of the shop, too. I'd be back. Sensing an elaborate, romantic set-up, the girls grinned and agreed, placed an empty coffee cup on the table of my choice and a newspaper.

I headed up to Warren's apartment then. This could be really awkward if Warren was there. Or a complete waste of my time if Jean wasn't. But no battle was ever won by dithering behind lines, so I made my preparations: seven blue glass beads down the hallway to the stairs, and a truffle on the top step, then seven more down to the next floor, and a truffle there, then seven more . . . . But I figured I'd better not put out any more truffles or a casual passerby might make off with my Hansel and Gretel lure. Trotting back up to the tenth floor, I laid the note I'd written -- with a glass bead on top -- right in front of the door and knocked on it . . . then ran -- hid in the stairwell to see what happened.

It took a little while before the door was opened -- and by Jean, to my relief. She came out to look around in confusion, and I quickly ducked back so she wouldn't spot me.

I hadn't signed the note, you see -- and I hoped she had a researcher's curiosity to follow the trail. Finishing a line of beads and truffles all the way down, I waited at the stairwell bottom, almost held my breath. But only a few minutes later, I heard her step on the stairs. So far, so good. Slipping out the door, I set beads all the way out through the building foyer . . . to the vast amusement of the security guard. "Don't give me away," I told him, exiting the building onto the sidewalk which led to the coffee shop. He shook his head and resettled his hat as I watched from behind a big potted palm outside the building. Jean emerged from the stairwell door, hair pulled back in a clip and dressed all in simple jeans and flannel. She was still a damn goddess. Her hands were full of gold foil truffles and she was grinning; I felt my own lips tips up. I had her now. Leaving a few more glass beads on the sidewalk leading towards the coffee shop, I taped a second note to the door and slipped inside to take my place at the back table where I hid behind the newspaper.

Less than two minutes later, the door tinkled open and I snuck a peek around the edge of the paper. Jean studied the little shop with its high round tables set about with stools, the forest green walls with abstract art and the shelves stacked with thematic mugs and French coffee makers for sale. Those things really did make the best damn coffee. When it comes to food or drink, trust the French to do it right. There was jazz on the stereo and a TV high in one corner, showing CNN close-captioned. Only a handful of other patrons were holed up in the shop that afternoon, so it didn't take her long to spot the guy at the back table with flowers waiting in front of a vacant stool.

She recognized me, paper or no paper. I doubt it was hard. I watched her rock back on her heels and pull in her chin, consider whether or not she was going to accept my peculiar invitation. I laid down the paper, crossed my arms on the table top, and grinned -- the Trademark Summers' Smile. As lethal as cyanide but twice as sweet -- so Marie had dubbed it. I'd never been ignorant of what it got me with the opposite sex. I'd figured that much out by the time I was four years old, and I wasn't above using it when the situation was desperate.

She approached me to dump glass beads and truffles on the table in a shower of sound, then seat herself across from me. "Okay, Scott, you get points for creativity -- I'll give you that. Was there something you wanted?"

"To talk. To apologize. We . . . ended it badly last time."

"You're a grand-master of understatement."

So. She wasn't going to make it easy for me, even while she wouldn't flounce out like an offended diva -- and I was struck by just how different that was from the Drama of Rogue. God, I did love Marie, but she'd had a rare talent for getting on my nerves at least once a week. She'd wanted life cast in grand passions and heroic emotions . . . and that just wasn't me. At first, I'd found it charming. Later, I'd found it grating even as Marie had grown increasingly restless, needing more from me than I'd been willing to give. My life was complicated enough without adding the personal to it -- which was why these past weeks had set me on my ear. I'd never equated keeping my emotions on an even keel with a lack of passion, but I needed something less like a Greek tragic trilogy. I was a man for formulae and equations.

And Jean was a scientist, too. She understood that.

But just now, I had to get past the abysmal mess that I'd made of it last time. "Tact," I said now, "was never my strong suit. I was three kinds of ass the other day -- I jumped to conclusions that were more in line with something my teenaged students would come up with than anything adult and rational. I should have asked, not assumed. I apologize."

She studied my face with frank brown eyes and almost unerringly caught my gaze behind red quartz. People rarely bothered to try, and for those who did, it took practice. But Jean had done it from the very first; it was more than telepathy. "I accept," she said finally, and turned her attention to the flowers, laid them out neatly in a line on the tabletop. "It's not your typical bouquet, Scott."

"It's from 'The Secret Language of Flowers.'" I didn't think it wise to confess that I'd first stumbled over the book on Marie's shelves. Instead, I pointed to the Lily of the Valley and the fern. "These mean that I'm fascinated by your sweetness."

The look she turned on me was pure amusement. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Summers."

I ignored that and went on, touched the yellow iris. "This is for passion." And for some reason, I suddenly found myself blushing. I'd lost my virginity at the ripe old age of fifteen, and had lived with Marie for going on five years now, but here I was, blushing in front of this woman I barely knew like I was a schoolboy again.

But she WAS a woman, not a girl. And I suddenly felt very silly for the flowers. Christ. Jean had a freakin' Ph.D. in addition to the M.D, with six papers in print in respected journals such as JAMA or THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE. She was even first author on one of them . . . and she was only thirty-two years old. I was just a high school math teacher who dressed up in black leather on weekends and pretended to be a superhero with machine-engine grease under his fingernails.

Maybe I should just get out of here before I made an even bigger ass of myself.

Either she'd been half-following my thoughts, or the tensing of my muscles gave me away. Her hand went out to cover mine. "Don't you dare bolt again after luring me down here with truffles, Scott Summers."

But I could barely concentrate on her words. Her touch had sent an electric shock all under my skin and I had to close my eyes just to keep my breathing even. Everything that had been missing with Marie a few nights ago . . . . This was where it had gone to hide. I'd been waiting for Jean to touch me again, like she had in the cabin.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. I'd never been a monk, but I had always been serially monogamous, only ever interested in one woman at a time. It was like a goddamn compass below the belt, and right now, the arrow was aimed straight at Jean.

And Christ, could she pick *that* up? Don't mind me, ma'am; the little cyclops in my pants is just acting like an idiot.

"And what do the roses mean?" she asked softly now.

My eyes snapped open again and I wet my lips so I could speak. She watched my mouth -- it was involuntary, I think. "Unity," I managed after a moment. "White and red roses stand for unity." Reaching out, I picked them up to hand them to her, so she could add them to the rest.

"No thorns," she noted. "Thanks."

"Roses without thorns mean I'm no longer afraid." I blurted it out before I could lose my nerve. Her dark eyes had gone wide. "I'm not afraid of this. Of us. Of whatever it is we have."

Not afraid my ass. I was utterly terrified -- and this was why Marie would never be the right one for me. She didn't terrify me this way, didn't evoke that kind of emotion. Safe, safe, plastic-knife safe. But just sitting at this table with Jean Grey was like handling a katana. All about *risk*. She could cut me fatally with a single word, and she knew it.

But she didn't cut me. She just smiled soft and ran her fingers along the rose stems. "I can tell you all about DNA helixes, but I never did learn the language of flowers." She bent to smell the roses, and the lily of the valley. "They are beautiful. Thank you, Scott."

"You're welcome. Can I buy you some coffee?"

Glancing over at the two girls behind the counter, she said, "Well, it is a coffee shop. I suppose we should give them some business. I wouldn't mind some Chai."

So I got up to fetch Chai for her and a cappuccino for me, and watched the TV idly while I waited. It gave me a moment to catch my breath and rearrange my thoughts. And what the hell did I really want to say to her, anyway? I think I'm in love with you, will you move in with me and let me fuck your brains out?

*That* would go over splendidly. I'd probably get myself slapped. And I'd deserve it.

After a moment, what was actually occurring on the local news penetrated my sex-preoccupied brain. An explosion in a warehouse somewhere. Looked nasty. Probably arson. I hoped it wasn't mutant related, but there was really no reason to assume it would be. New York hardly lacked for violent crime.

The Chai and coffee was ready, so I took it back to the table. Jean had used the wait much like I had, lining up blue beads and truffles on the table like the thoughts in her head. We both started in at once. "Jean, I'm not sure what this is we have, but -- " "Scott, I meant to leave again with Logan, but -- "

Laughing, we broke off. She drank tea. I watched. God, I envied even a coffee cup, wanting her mouth on my lips instead.

Get a grip, Summers.

"What are you staring at?" she asked me.

"You."

Red tinged her ears and neck. "You know, I am almost four years older than you."

"Not old enough to be my mother, then. And don't women usually outlive men by about ten years?"

The red was fading from her skin. "It wouldn't bother you dating an older woman?"

"Should it?" But I was acting a good deal more cavalier than I felt, and I suspected that she -- telepath that she was -- knew it. So I just frowned and traced a bit of spilled foam milk on the table top, and 'fessed up. "It bothers me a lot more that you're educated right out of most gainful employment while I'm still trying to finish a masters before I lose my New York teaching certificate."

"You need a masters for that?"

"To teach high school for more than five years in the public schools, yeah. Private schools have more leeway, but Xavier does try to run a tight ship. It wouldn't look good if his sub-headmaster didn't fulfill state requirements for even public schools."

"You're the sub-headmaster? But I guess I should have figured that out."

Half laughing, I slipped my fingers up under my glasses and rubbed at my eyes. I could feel one of my headaches starting. "Christ. How did we get on the subject of my certification?"

Dipping her head, she smiled. "You were worried about my penchant for collecting degrees. But Scott, haven't you heard the old joke? What does a B.S. stand for?"

I was thrown. "A Bachelor of Science?"

She was laughing at me. "Don't be so literal. A B.S. stands for 'bull shit.'"

I started to smile. She went on, "An M.S. means 'more of the same,' and a Ph.D. means 'piled hirer and deeper.' You had the right of it, you know. I'm educated out of most normal jobs, and out of a lot of normal life. I can run a scanning electron microscope or put a trach in a choking ER patient. But I can't run a sewing machine or cook a pot of rice."

"I can cook rice . . . but I wouldn't go much further than that."

"So we'll make a pact. I won't force you to eat my cooking and you won't force me to eat yours." She held out her pinky. A little bemused, I hooked mine through it -- and as before, there was that *electricity*, but it felt more manageable this time, maybe because it wasn't unexpected. "Deal?" she asked.

"Deal," I replied, biting back a stupid little laugh because here we were making a pact about cooking before we'd even had a first date. We'd just leap-frogged right over the usual exchange: 'Jean, will you go out to dinner and a movie with me?' 'Yes, Scott, I'd love to.'

Maybe I should ask her to move in with me after all.

We still had pinkies locked, and were grinning at each other, when my cell phone rang. I pulled it out and flipped it open. I'd freed my pinkie but only to move my hand into hers, or hers into mine, depending on one's perspective. Our fingers laced. "This is Scott Summers," I said into the phone.

"Scott -- Scott, where are you?"

"Warren? I'm in the coffee shop near your apartment. Why?"

"Can you -- Um . . . I need you, man. I --" A pause, a strange sound, like choking.

I sat up, started to pull my hand free but Jean didn't let me go. Her grip was strong. "Warren. Talk to me. Where are you? Are you okay?"

"Can you get down to St Mary's Hospital? There's been -- God. Just . . . can you get down here?"

I was already on my feet and reaching for my jacket. So was Jean, moving just as fast as I was. She didn't question, didn't demand instant details that I didn't have. She'd switched to all business -- Dr. Jean Grey -- with the same calm focus that she'd shown at the Statue. "We're on our way, Warren."

~*~

Traumas by Shana

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Disclaimer: All X-Men characters belong to Marvel and Fox; this piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.