Jean wishes sometimes that she could just have sex with Scott without having him in her head. She strokes her fingers down his bare stomach, and then lower, and the way that feels to him makes her arch her hips and sigh. She pulls away and leans back on the bed, but she isn't sure if it feels good to her when he climbs on top or if it just feels good to him.

"If you want me to stop--" he says, freezing.

I don't want you to stop. She kisses him as reassurance, and strokes the hair at the back of his neck. It isn't that she doesn't want him. It's that it's so hard to be sure. When they have sex the lines between them blur until she can't remember which one of them she is for sure.

Sometimes she thinks Scott doesn't want her to. He's so hungry for intimacy, never quite satisfied no matter how close she gets. She thinks he'd be happy for them to crawl into each other's skins and never find their way back out, because that way he'd know she could never leave--

"Damn it, Jean," Scott says. He pulls away from her and sits up on the side of the bed. "I'm not trying to make you stay."

"I didn't say you were."

"You don't have to say it."

"You aren't listening to what I'm saying."

"I think I am," Scott says. He gets up. "I think I should -- I don't know."

"I'll go grade some papers," Jean says. She kisses him lightly on the cheek. "You know I love you."

"I do know that," Scott says. "Yes." But he doesn't smile.

Jean goes downstairs and sits on the bottom step of the staircase and runs one hand over the scratched wood of the step. It's so familiar, she can almost believe her hands have left marks here, worn right into the wood.

She doesn't look up at the sound of Professor Xavier's wheelchair.

"Do you want to talk?" he asks gently.

"I don't know how to make this work," she says.

"You'll both figure out how to make it work."

"Or else we won't?" she says, and lets herself think for a moment about a chessboard and a plastic cell.

"... Or else you won't. But Scott is not Erik. His wants are ... more reasonable."

"And I'm not you," Jean says. "I know what everybody wants, and I get tired of wanting to give it to them."

"I want you to be happy," Charles says. She slides down to sit on the floor so that she can put her head on his knee the way she did when she was twelve years old. He rests his hand on her hair. Jean wishes he would wrap his mind around hers again the way he did then, and quiet all the voices that drive her restless hands into motion.

But this is as close as he'll let her get, tonight; she can't make him come closer even when she tries. She closes her eyes, and wonders if it's her who feels alone.