Codes: Scott, Rogue, Warren, A/U
Rating: R for language and some sexual implications. eh, it's tres mild for me.
Summary: Picking up where Minisinoo left off in "He Always Wore Glasses, She Always Wore Gloves" in Jenn's AU: poor Scott is having a helluva time dealing with this new twist in his life, and old friend Warren lends a help.
Archive: Jenn, it's your AU, it's SO all yours.
Feedback: is wonderful! I shunt the flames out the airlock of the Eureka Maru though.

A/N: Don't even go there. I'm doing it, my Muse is happy to be talking about something besides Caligo, and well, if Min's not taking on Scott, I guess I gotta. *eg*

The next hour he spent was in chaos. Marie this, Jean that. Duty this, heart that. Should do this, should do that.

Impending insanity all around.

He wasn't the kind of guy to let it go as far as it did-- and how long had it been since Logan and his foundling had trundled into their life? GOD. He didn't have a freaking chaotic bone in his body and now...

Now, he was stuck between the real life, feminine version of a rock and a hard place.

His options laughed at him. On one hand he had Marie, the girl-- nay, woman-- he could marry, the one he could trust with his heart mind and ever present ability to kill with a blink, and on the other.

Scott ran a hand through his hair and hissed through clenched teeth. Marie had left in a serious fit. Her car was probably gone and headed somewhere-- anywhere-- to get away from here.

>From him. He had betrayed her. Everything he had meant to her, everything he had meant to their relationship.

"Oh, fuck me." Shaking his head and stalking out of the room, considering a long bike ride out on the abandoned highways of rural New York, but setting the plan aside for the nagging sense of worthlessness that might cream his body on the side of the road, he headed for the only thing he appreciated more than the woman he loved and his life itself:

The Blackbird.

It was a silly thing, his fascination with the plane, and Marie had called him on it a dozen times. Teased him relentlessly as he spent hours doing regular maintenance work that would usually take a half-hour at best, but no, not Scott Summers. Not He Who has a Hard-On for Mechanics.

Her angry name for him.

He laughed at himself, opting for the internal, mocking criticism over crying with the self-pity sitting somewhere near his heart. Yeah, he had screwed it up nicely, and if it were any other woman-- any other redhead, any other walking, talking mutant with the XX sex chromosome-- he would have sized her up and walked back to the love of his life happily.

But Jean Grey was different.

Stepping into the cockpit and rubbing his hands along the front of his jeans, then settling onto the metal planked deck and reaching fingers around a lower panel to access the altitude control mainframe-- funny how important making sure they flew level seemed important all of a sudden-- he sighed and buried his hands wrist deep in Blackbird innards. When the dribble of grease hit his arm, the rolled up sleeve of a Polo saved from grease condemnation, he paused, watched it pool down slightly and sighed.

And then wondered if the reclusive telepath hiding out by the boat house was as much a freak about cleanliness as Marie was. Sure, he had his peeves about everything being in order, especially paperwork, but the first time she had caught the axel grease dripped inconsequently in his hair from another session with the stealth jet, she had literally shoved him into the shower and banned him from her presence 'til he was squeaky clean.

At the time, it had been funny, even charming. Now, it only set his mouth into a frown and made him wonder what he was missing.

"Fuse need a dire change, Cyke?"

Starting at the voice, banging the side of his head against the control panel frame and driving the rim of the glasses deep into the bridge of his nose, Scott swore.

"Geez, not paying attention very well?"

"No, Warren," he grated, uncurling from his half-under position in the jet's nose and shaking his head. "So next time, have the choir herald your entrance."

Warren Worthington the Third, his expansive wings folded neatly behind the chair as he reclined and watched his friend with interest, clucked his tongue. "Wrong kind of Angel. So what's eating you? Marie should have you tied up and singing sweet nothings to her by now."

"Marie," an oil and dust laden hand clenched in and out of a fist, "is off grounds, pissed at hell at me."

The winged mutant leaned forward in sudden interest. "Huh? What about?"

Scott flashed an unpleasant smile and pulled himself into the co-pilot's seat, rubbing his hands on his jeans again. At least Warren, long time friend and ever the arrogant rich kid that pried gossip like no other, wouldn't hit him for spilling the beans. "You know that girl Logan brought with him? The telepath?"

"Ooh, yeah," Warren's brow ticked up in interest, "sweet body, fucking gorgeous hair, tortured soul, fractured mind. Prof thinks she's got potential, but all I see is a kitten that was left to drown in the river."

"Heh, you always liked them naturally red. ANYWAYS, yeah. That one. That's why Marie packed her bag and left tonight. Why I don't know where she is, and can't seem to care enough."

"Shit, Scott, you're kidding--"

"Not a bit." Trying to crack his neck and holding the bit of frayed wire he had plucked from the jet like a bitter weapon, he shook his head at his friend. "I went and followed her tonight, found her at the dock. I talked to her, and she kinda, well, outside of the Professor, you ever dealt with a telepath?"

"Not a one. Even a mentor rooting around here," Warren tapped his temple, "is a bit uncomfortable."

"That's just because you didn't want him to know you were cheating."

"Pfft."

"Well, she did. I told her to, in fact." The blush nearly crept into his cheeks and Scott looked away suddenly, casting masqued eyes towards the windshield of the Blackbird. Blushing? He never blushed once over anything that had happened between him and Marie. "And I dunno. It was-- I liked it. There's some weird connection going on here, and I'm screwing up what I've got with Marie for it."

"Huh," his wings stretched out and curled back against the chair, "so you did a me."

"'Cuse me?"

"You've never once strayed from your Southern lily?"

Scott snorted. "You do recall how many times I've been told to drop those control issues... right?"

"The clingy bastard thing, yeah." Warren shrugged. "She liked it. You're the only one that takes risks with her."

A moment of defensiveness took away the moping as his head snapped up. "No, everyone else is too coward to try. Even that Wolverine guy. Yeah, sure, he did his bit and saved her ass on the Torch, but Christ, even he ducks from her. I did what my heart told me to, and so maybe I almost got put in a coma for it multiple times, but so what?" Suppressing the urge to stand and pace-- God, he was good at that-- he sighed. Warren was staring at him with an analytical eye, whatever sympathy had been there, whatever emotion his comrade had felt when he and Marie went public with the engagement expressed, it was missing from his pretty boy face.

"Cut to the point, man. You want more from the telepath, don't you?"

The response was murmured through gritted teeth, as if trying to fight back the answer was a point against the bastard routine he was taking on. "Yes."

"She could give you more than Marie could?"

The laugh was stopped in his throat. "Despite the fact that kinkiness has become part and parcel of my bedroom life, there IS something behind real, unbroken touch."

"Hmm," Warren ran a hand along his jaw, thinking out loud, "though the babe's got issues. I dunno. As a friend, Scott, I'm not telling you to go with your heart... or your dick, cause either way, they've both already got you in deep shit with Marie."

Dropping his head in his hands, the headache eating at the back of his head intensifying as he listened to advice that was occasionally on the level with Loveline, Scott opted to murmur through his fingers rather than regard the crystal blue eyes. "Not helping here."

"Marie needs to chill, feel the wind blowing at her back-- probably has something with absorbing part of nature boy Logan-- and she'll come to her senses. Or she'll dump your ass, make you eat that ring and wish for you to die slowly, and not at her hands."

"Voice of experience," Scott muttered.

"I was lucky that that one wasn't an absorber, otherwise she might be growing feathers right now." The blonde shrugged again. "As for the telepath, you've got to get to know her anyways. As soon as the Prof cuts her loose of her training wheels, she'll be drafted into the team and you'll have to work with her. So, maybe, see where it goes. She could just be a very close friend-to-be, man. Sex aside-- and I bet it's fantastic with a telepath-- you might just have gotten the person who'll listen to you whine ALL the time."

The flitting remembrance of just how... intimate it was to have someone else in his mind, non-obtrusive and infinitely more gentle than even the Professor's touch made him shiver. And Jean had just touched the surface, playing in the old memories he had told Marie about a few days before, the ones haunting him as he regarded the ruby quartz marred reflection in the mirror. She now knew, whether or not she realised it, how much he hated the glasses, how much he hated being restrained by an innovation of technology because Fate had kicked him.

It made him suddenly wish he could give her a better memory. Of something-- anything-- to wipe away the fear in her eyes when those precious shields wavered and the weight of so many minds touched her.

To at least mentally touch her, comfort her, when he was bound to not do it physically.

"Is it cheating on your fiancée to think about someone with a psychic ability?"

Warren actually laughed, the sound echoing through the body of the plane as he shook his head sadly at his friend and leader. "What's the phrase? 'It's not cheating if they don't know?'"

"Yeah, and that's why you're currently single, Warren."

The man otherwise addressed as Angel let the joviality drop from his face a little. "Well, not really, but seriously, man. If Marie thinks you're cheating when you're not, it's not you who needs to eat blame. I dunno, Scott, I just don't like Logan acting like her shoulder to cry on and her not thinking it doesn't mean anything."

"Warren..."

"No, I'm looking out for you. She screws you over, I'll tell you. You screw her over... well, I recommend the nearby four star hotel to lay low in. Use my account, even."

Scott groaned, looked up to regard the man across from him with tired eyes, strangely peevish over the hues of red his friend was cast in and gave up. He really had no control in the situation. His heart was telling that loyalty was everything-- what he had given to Marie was probably gone just because he had dared to wander-- and that hurt. However, he wondered absently, who had it hurt more?

"Trust me." He had told Jean to trust him.

He had just sacrificed trust for trust, hadn't he?

"Warren?"

"Hmm?"

Wearing a false smile for the briefest second, the expression almost deadly in its myriad of emotions, Scott hooked a finger towards the jet's open hatch. "Get out. You're a great friend, but shit, man, I just can't... deal with it like this."

Warren Worthington nodded, stood up and compulsively let his wings stretch before curling them against his back. "No problem. But if you decide to cut the redhead loose, send her my way, 'kay?"

Laughing at the outrageous image of Jean Grey curled against the haughty, Armani-clad figure of the future heir to Worthington Enterprises, Scott nodded despite his outright reaction of "no." "Yeah, okay, sure. Now beat it."

The hand held to his temple was rigid despite the smile curling his mouth up. "Sir, yes sir."

"Good man," waving off the other and sliding back out of the co-pilot seat, he scooted back under the control panel and setting his hand back through the wires. Sighing to himself and poking at the part he had nearly yanked free when Warren had startled him, he knew he had screwed up.

He had never considered himself a playboy, but considering the fact that he was hiding in the cockpit of his favourite toy, stuck between a woman pissed at hell at him and another that was possibly acting on merely a powers-related connection, his self-estimation was clearly flawed.

He couldn't have both. He didn't WANT both. Marie was... beyond words. They had too much between them to simply forget about the relationship and move on. But Jean... it wasn't just the bewitching looks behind wary eyes and a half-starved body that caught his attention: she was LITERALLY beyond words. "Trust me." He had actually said that to her. And he had meant it.

How the hell was he supposed to decide?