Written for Minisinoo's powerswap challenge for Scott and Jean ("Write me a movieverse story featuring -- but not limited to -- Scott and Jean, in which the characters have radically different powers").
Opposites Attract
There's no smoking in the mansion.
Of course, Logan doesn't play by the rules. He doesn't think they apply to him. Scott's tempted not to wait for Jean in the morning, to go downstairs and watch Logan light up. He'd heal, but Scott hopes it would hurt like hell first.
He'd do it, if he could be sure Logan wouldn't be standing next to wooden furniture, or one of the cars, or one of the students. Who won't heal.
Scott closes his eyes, and opens them. Charles offers every now and then to make him forget the worst of it. So far he's always refused. He needs the reminder. It would be so easy to take just a few risks.
Jean comes out of the shower, toweling off her hair. Scott leans back against the pillows, already dressed.
"We'll be late for classes," he says.
"I'm hurrying," she says, and smiles at him. She slips into her dress. He gets up to come zip it up for her, and kisses the cool back of her neck. There are beads of ice on her skin, and frost beginning to stiffen her hair.
He tells himself he loves her. He really does.
They run into Logan on the way downstairs.
"Hi, Logan," Jean says. It's a different smile. One he's never seen her give him.
"I'll go on ahead," Scott says.
"All right," Jean says. She pats him on the arm.
"If you think you can go ten feet without a babysitter," Logan says.
Scott turns his back and walks away. He stops in front of the windows on the ground floor, staring out over the garden.
He's worried that she'll convince Logan to stay. He's worried that he'll have to watch them go on missions together while he's trapped here working on the cars or in the lab, waiting for them to come home. Every few months he makes another plea to Ororo and Charles to be on the field team.
"It's just too dangerous, Scott," Ororo always says. "If Jean were injured, unconscious .. ."
"Innocent people could be hurt all too easily," Charles says. "That's not our goal."
He wants to shout at them. He never does. If a pair of telepaths don't know how he feels already, shouting won't help. And he isn't about to shout at Charles about the unfairness of the limits on his life. Charles was the one who made him believe that living with his limitations could be bearable.
Jean is the one who gave him freedom. As long as he's with her.
They've gotten very good at it. It's cold wherever they go; Scott wears a lot of sweaters. But where Jean is, the flames of candles lit in windows don't explode into roaring sheets of flame. Cigarettes don't catch people's hair on fire. Gas stoves don't destroy buildings.
He notices Marie coming in shyly at the back of the classroom, clutching new books in her gloved hands. He knows he should talk to her, tell her that even with a difficult mutation it's possible to have a happy, productive life. He's not particularly in the mood.
She's probably staying; she's got almost as little choice in the matter as he did. There'll be time to have a good attitude, be a mentor, after Logan's left. If he leaves. Scott wants him gone, more than anything, and soon. Before things can go any farther between Logan and Jean.
Because he knows Jean won't leave him. Fire and ice, she says in the evenings, and leans cool and naked against him, smiling as his arms go around her and she presses her forehead to his shoulder. As if love were as simple as need. As if she were always meant to be key to his prison, meant to be with him.
He's afraid that if she falls in love with Logan she'll see that it's only become a prison for two.
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Author's note: Scott has movieverse Pyro's powers, uncontrollable because of his brain injury; Jean has movieverse Iceman's powers; Ororo has movieverse Jean's powers, as her own wouldn't make her and this Jean a very balanced team.