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X-Men fic: Bump in the Night (Jean and Charles)
Title: Bump in the Night
Rating: PG
Notes: Same continuity as my other XMM fics.
Summary: Jean thought winter nights would get easier, eventually.

Feedback and concrit are, as always, greatly appreciated.

Bump in the Night
January, 1984

Jean wakes with a gasp and claws her way out of the tangled sheets as though the cotton burns. It's only after she's leapt out of bed and stands, squinting, with one hand on the light switch and the other over her pounding heart that she realizes she's moved at all. She leans against the back of the door and closes her eyes, willing herself to stop shaking. She concentrates on breathing slowly through her nose, tells herself that she's nineteen years old—a college student, for God's sake-- and it was just a dream.

Just a dream. The biting cold, the disgusting smell, her stomach eating itself with hunger, the terror and anger and bleakness, the dirt beneath her cracked fingernails, ground into stiff and aching hands...it was just a dream, this time. Her dream. She didn't understand the German. It was just a dream, and sure, it was awful, but she doesn't need to cry about it.

It is cold in her old room; the wood floor is like ice beneath her bare feet, and the chill seeps up into her ankles. Jean shivers despite the flannel pants and sweatshirt she wears to bed in winter. Her bed is probably cold by now, definitely not appealing. Besides, she's wide awake.

And she will not—will not—wait five minutes and go down to the kitchen, because it will be cold and dark. There won't be a faint light coming up the stairs, won't be hushed clinking of mugs and the hum of the microwave and the quiet ding of the microwave's door opened before the timer has a chance to go off. There won't be the scrape of a chair on the floor or the faint, metallic clicking of a spoon stirring sugar in.

If she goes down—which she won't—the kitchen will be empty. There will not be two cups on the table, with long hands clutching his just a bit too tightly. There won't be eyes trained on the door, waiting for her, or lips twisted somewhere between apology and understanding.

There won't be conversation, but there never was. Just silence and disgustingly hot coffee an hour or two past stale, and the knowledge that if she wanted to say something, she could.

Jean doesn't remember what his face looked like those nights. Just his feet, beneath the hems of navy blue or black pajama pants, wearing the kind of wool socks with red toes that they make sock monkeys from. It's the socks, of all things, that finally make her blink back tears, and she's moving before she knows it again. She doesn't look down the stairway.

His door is unlocked, of course, and his room is very dark even with the light spilling from her half-closed door down the hall. She almost walks into the wheelchair but somehow senses it in time, only to take another step and bark her shin against the bedframe. She presses her lips together and waits for the pain to abate. The sheets rustle; if he wasn't awake before, he is now.

“Jean?” His voice is thick and slow with sleep. “What is it?”

She swallows, feeling suddenly very stupid. It was just a dream, after all.

She has never known what to say, at times like these.

“Jean? Are you all right?”

“My feet are really cold.” Which isn't what she means to say, just the first thing that comes to mind. But she's such a mess that he probably doesn't even have to try to read her thoughts right now.

There is movement on the bed; the mattress creaks. His fingers bump her forearm before he finds her hand and presses it. Jean grasps it tightly and tries not to project her tangled thoughts.

“I'll get up,” Charles says, sounding much more awake. “What time is it?”

“After three, I think. I'm sorry.” Jean shakes her head even though he can't see it. “Don't get up. I just—I--”

He squeezes her hand again. “It's all right. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I just don't want to be alone right now,” she whispers. “Could I stay in here? For awhile?”

A long pause. “Jean, that's not app--”

“I'm not your student anymore.” Though she feels about eight years old. And it's not like he would ever take advantage of her—or even want to—anyway.

“Even so,” he says, in a tone that implies he heard the last thought, at least, “it's still not--”

“I actually am freezing.” And if she's with Charles, she won't get up and call him. Won't sit there, unable to speak, as he says 'Yes?' twice and then hangs up, leaving her to hold the receiver in trembling hands until she's sure he won't call back. Won't have to tiptoe back to her room and cry into her pillow and kick herself about it until morning.

Charles sighs and drops her hand. “Go around to the other side, then. And I hope you don't snore.”

“I don't. And thanks.” She climbs into the bed and curls up on her side, away from him. Even so, she can feel his warmth, and she shivers. There's a deep, instinctive urge to press her icy feet up against his calves, but that actually would be inappropriate, for any number of reasons, so she is careful to stay near the edge.

She's not really tired. She wonders if this was his pillow. It was certainly his side of the bed. The pillow smells like detergent, and faintly of Charles' aftershave (though that could just be him), but there is nothing left of Erik.

Jean almost wishes it did smell like him—coffee and cigarettes and oil or metal or whatever that sharp scent was that was just him. Then again, if it did, she'd probably tear up like she did over the damned socks, like she does every time she has that damned dream, like she probably will every winter for the rest of her life...

She chokes and presses her lips together.

The mattress sways, the blankets slide down, and then Charles' hand is on her shoulder. “Go to sleep, Jean,” he murmurs. “Everything will be all right.”

It won't. It isn't. But Jean figures he already knows.