Summers Lovin'

Alex Summers || 29 || Havok || X-Men

[wreakhavck-archive]

telepathological‌:

Jean isn’t sure what he’s going to say so she puts up a hand before he can say more. She uses the bars on the crib to help her stand, turning her back to him and adjusting the sheets while staring at the pictures he’d hung on the wall over the crib. A sonogram, pictures of them. It was beautiful, and Jean should have known it was just a dream. Always dreaming like the lonely little girl she was. 

She clears her throat, and when she speaks it’s obvious she’s controlling her emotions the best she can. Right behind that exhaustion is certainty that this wouldn’t last very much longer if she didn’t accept some hard truths. “I’m sorry,” she says shortly, swallowing hard before turning to him. He looks just as tired as she is but she doesn’t let herself wonder why, it’s the wondering that got her here in the first place.

“It’s the fundamentals of our relationship,” she says quietly, holding onto the crib to steady herself. “I need you more than you need me,” waiting for him between tours. “I want you more than you want me,” every kiss and touch she’d claimed and had to coax out of him. “And… I love you more than you love me.” She raises her shoulder to her ear, lips pressing together. “I’m not saying it for pity or because you are wrong for it… I… I’m apologizing, because I have to accept what you can give me and stop asking for more.” Her voice breaks on the last bit and she turns away to fix the sheets again even though they’re perfect. She swallows the lump forming in her throat, “And I can do that, I promise I can do that, just please don’t leave.”

Before he can even say anything, Jean stops him. Alex lets her speak, stepping into the room to lean against the wall beside the door. He almost speaks when she apologises, to offer his own, but she keeps going before he can. It’s what she says next that makes him startle.

I love you more than you love me. It’s not true, can’t she see that it’s not true? No, because he was awful at expressing that love. Had surpressed it so long, been convinced he was wrong for it and that he was mistaking platonic love for something more. But it’s not until she says that that he realises how much he’s failed her.

“I’m not leaving again,” he promises her, crossing the room to take her upper arms in his hands. “Jean, I--I love you. And I’ve not said it enough. Not shown you how much I love you. Maybe I’ve just been waiting for you to realise you can do better than me. And that’s-- It’s not fair on you to do that. I’m sorry. I’m not going anywhere. Okay?”

[beastxly]

@wreakhavck

[telepathological]

Jean thought about sleeping the entire day away once Warren had left. He didn’t want to but she didn’t want him to have to hang around while she moped and cried. He had more important things going on back at the mansion. She could have slept the day way, she wanted to, but instead she found herself unable to keep still. Everywhere she looked she saw a massive mess where there was only clutter, or nothing at all. She cleaned and cleaned, organized everything capable of organizing. Folded his shirts one way, and then another. In the nursery she dressed the crib the way they’d been meaning to all week. Fresh cotton sheets with ducks printed on them, a crib-skirt that looked like water. She’s just finishing tying the knots when she hears the front door open and close.

Her heart feels as if it’s in her throat, eyes drifting to the window. It was almost nighttime, the sun low in the sky. Had she really been cleaning this whole time? Her hands fall in her lap, she considers going to meet him in the living room but suddenly she’s so exhausted. She didn’t have it in her, to see the look on his face that meant clearly it was over. His footsteps in the doorway make the floor creak and not even then does she look up, sitting with her back against the crib. She doesn’t appear to have slept, though she had, wearing the same pajamas he had left her in the night before. She pushes the hair that’s fallen out of her braid away from her face, eyes on his shoes. “I cleaned the floors,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t really care that he tracked dirt in. It didn’t matter.

@wreakhavck

[wreakhavck-archive]

The visions all day ought to have been disturbing. He doesn’t have powers like that, and it could be someone messing with him. But... He’s familiar enough with people being in his head to recognise that this presence was benevolent. Not familiar but not malicious either. 

Jean... cleaning all day. Alex tries to shake it from his mind at first, needing to clear his head. But the visions are persistent. And as he began to reflect on the night before, on his own insecurities that he couldn’t be what she needed, he realised what the visions were trying to show.

He returns as the sun begins to set, coming in to find Jean in the nursery. Stopping in the door, his breath catches in his throat. He’d never thought too much about having kids or a family, not knowing if he’d get the chance, but now... “Sorry,” he says, quickly taking off his shoes. He sighs and steps into the room. 

“Jean...”

[wreakhavck-archive]

xnplainsight‌:

Jean had noticed it. When she’d stepped outside a few mornings ago to pick some herbs from the garden she kept out front. It made her feel like a mother again, taking care of those little plants. She made them grow from the heat in her palm sometimes, when she needed to watch something flourish. She was kneeling there in the grass when she heard her sweet voice. Of course she threw everything she’d picked to the dirt, running around the corner of the house to find her. She didn’t see Hope, but she did see him. A much younger him, happier too. 

It was only a moment, and in the next second with a blink of her eyes he was gone. At first she chalked it up to the isolation, her powers making her see things that weren’t there the longer she went without actively using them. But it happened again and again. Seeing glimpses of Arlo stretched out on his bed reading. Alex shaving in the bathroom while a young, teenage Hope chattered to him where she braided her hair sitting on the edge of the tub. “It’s time…” she whispers back when he lets her know he’s done hiding. Her eyes are screwed shut tight, tears pooling at the corner. “I think…” She sniffles, hand gripping his shirt like she’s afraid he’ll run off when she tells him. “I know that it’s falling apart. And if it is that means…” They could go back, they could move forward. They could fix the world. And find their children.

Alex hates this. He hates not knowing what’s going on with her. She wouldn’t talk to him. Ironic for him to think so, considering their history, but he couldn’t just let it go. She was avoiding talking about it. “Time for what?” he asks. Time to do something? Or... What? The last time she left to fix things... No, Alex wouldn’t think about that. Not right now. “Jeannie...”

He sighs. “We have to,” he nods. His thumb brushes her cheek lightly and kisses her forehead. “Before it all falls apart and no one can fix it. But you... You need to talk to me. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

[animalsnaps]

[telepathological]

@wreakhavck

[wreakhavck-archive]

xnplainsight‌:

Jean knows she’s messed up when she can see his attention shifting. It was impossible to stay out of his head these days. Between Hope still missing and now Arlo gone too… She could feel the Phoenix beckoning to her, though some might argue she wasn’t Jean at all and the Phoenix always. 

She wants to run and hide, lock herself in their room like she’d been doing for stretches at a time. But she had a feeling he wouldn’t let her now that he knew the kids were involved. “She won’t talk to me…” she whispers. “I think it’s because she knows where they are, and she thinks if I knew too… I don’t know.” Her counterpart, the one found at the bottom of the lake they’d died in years ago, was the real Jean Grey. Recognized as such by people she’d grown up with. Which meant she was the leader of the remaining X-Men, not her.

“If you knew...” He has a feeling she knows more than she’s letting on. Or has a theory at the very least. “Talk to me, Jeannie. Let me in too.” It had been a long journey for the two of them to learn to be open with each other; he had never been good at it. He leans his forehead against hers, holding her close. The other Jean Grey may be the original but this was still his Jeannie. The Jean who’d grown up in the mansion with him, who remembered everything he did, who he fell in love with. He’d refused to give up searching for her when the ‘real’ Jean was discovered. She was real too.

“We can’t do nothing,” he murmurs. There were many many times that he would gladly give up the hero life. But he couldn’t let the world burn and stand by. Especially not while his children fought.

[wreakhavck-archive]

xnplainsight‌:

The last time Jean had heard anything about their niece it was from Arlo telling her to stay away from Rachel. Their phone calls often ended in arguments even if their last words to each other were always I love you. And the others… It was hard to look Oli and Ray in the face knowing their mother died rescuing her kid. She still remembers Anna’s face the moment she threw Arlo from the facility and into Jean’s arms before being pulled back in. The look of horror on her face when she knew she’d never see her own kids again. 

She pushes it from her mind, though it’s clear in her eyes that she’d returned to the place Alex had rescued her from. In her mind, they were still there. They’d always be there as long as Hope was held prisoner. Or dead. Feeling his restlessness continue to rise, she walks away to pretend to straighten out the room. Busy body and busy hands kept him from seeing her too clearly. “No, total silence. Not Rachel, or Olivier, or Ray.” She’s trying to keep her voice calm but it rises at the end of her sentences before she catches herself. “And Jean,” it seems weird talking about herself, her other self. The one that was real and living her life, while she herself was some sort of stranger to everyone else. “…she won’t talk to me.”

Total silence. Alex likes that even less. He stands, pacing to the window before peering out, rubbing his jaw absently. But Jean’s final words make him go still, looking to her. That agitation, restlessness, disappears from his stance, replaced by concern on his face.

He goes to her, taking her face gently in his hands. “What do you mean?” he asks quietly. His eyes search hers, trying to find confirmation of his wife there. Did he need to call Hank? Charles? “Jeannie? What is it?”

[wreakhavck-archive]

xnplainsight‌:

It didn’t take her using her powers to notice the change in her husband. Jean could feel his restlessness growing, especially after what happened to Scott. It was like it didn’t matter what they built, it always got torn down. But as he became more tired of hiding, she became more afraid of returning to their lives as X-Men. She could feel the Phoenix laying dormant inside of her, and the last time she let her out… She couldn’t do it again, she couldn’t be consumed again.

Leaving the kitchen, she goes to stand behind the couch and him. Her hand goes to his hair, threading her fingers through it lightly as she answers. “He’s out,” she says tentatively. “But he isn’t coming home. He… They wouldn’t tell me where he is going, just that some organization recruited him. Along with Olivier and some of the other kids.” She didn’t mention Rachel, not yet.

He’s out. But he wasn’t coming home. “Some organisation?” Alex echoes. That sounded ominous, especially given that the prison wouldn’t tell them who. Alex knows that since his son was legally of age that he was able to withhold that kind of information if he chose, but it didn’t sit well. He could feel that pit of worry in his stomach.

“Have you heard from the other kids yet then?” he asks. This was getting to be too much. He couldn’t just sit here. “Any of them?” How could he sit here while his kids were out there?

[xnplainsight]

Outside the world was burning. Most days Jean didn’t think about that. Most days Jean barely stepped a foot out the door. Outside the sky was a sort of perma-orange. Fires blazing, blood filling the sky. But here, it was safe. Here, they were in their own Garden. A paradise even, with the birds still chirping in the trees and the sunlight seeming pure and good as it filtered through the windows. Here was safe. And quiet. And barren. In every room there was a ghost, at the breakfast table or sitting on the couch. A ghost to be tucked into bed, a ghost waiting for their hair to be brushed. And there was him.

Jean stares at him, idly drying a plate that wasn’t even wet anymore. She feels an anxiety in her chest, tight and gripping. Talking about them gave the pain power, and most days she felt powerless already. “I got a call,” she says quietly then clears her throat to speak loud enough for him to hear. “I got a call. From the warden at…” She sets the plate down finally, licking her lips.

@wreakhavck

[wreakhavck-archive]

Alex was getting restless. As much as he tried, he couldn’t keep his family safe, and it was becoming increasingly clear that he couldn’t just sit by and let the world burn. He was a soldier, had been since he was still practically a kid, even before Charles had recruited him to the mutant team. He had to do something. 

He looks up when Jean speaks, his body tensing. She didn’t need to finish that sentence, he knows where. “And? What did they say?” Alex and his son didn’t always see eye to eye. In fact, the often fought. But no one could say Alex didn’t love all his children, his son included.

[wreakhavck-archive]

telepathological‌:

Jean can tell there’s a lot going on up there, of course she respected his boundaries as much as possible but his anxious energy was hard to ignore. She didn’t think you had to be a telepath to feel it either. Her suspicions are confirmed when the doctor gives Alex a kind smile, like she’s trying to put him at ease. “Mr. Xavier?” she asks, offering him a hand to shake.

“Summers,” Jean corrects quickly with a flash of a smile. “We’re not..”

The doctor has enough grace to look embarrassed, giving him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Mr. Summers, hello. I’m Dr. Kirkland. And I know Jean, of course.” She gives her a smile before sitting down on the rolling chair beside the bed. 

Alex has the grace to be a touch embarrassed at the way the doctor approaches him, knowing that his nerves were palpable. “Alex,” he adds after Jean’s correction. “Just call me Alex.” He looks to Jean. The thought of marrying her was one that had crossed his mind many times, but something held him back. Some little voice telling him to doubt what he thought.

“Pleasure to meet you, doctor.” He sits in one of the chairs by the door, scooting it a little closer so he felt less like a voyeur.

[telepathological]

@wreakhavck

“Stop playing with that,” Jean hisses, batting at his back which is all she can reach from where she’s seated. The room is a bland shade of robin’s egg blue, and it smelled like cleaning supplies. On the walls are what are definitely stock photos of happy, smiling pregnant women holding their bellies like they were trophies. No pregnant woman she ever met held their belly like that. When he continues to inspect the sonogram machine she huffs and tries flinging a empty collection sample cup from the basket on the shelf beside her. It bounces off his head and hits the television screen that soon would showcase their child to them, making her wince and cover her mouth. 

[wreakhavck-archive]

Alex is nervous, it’s hard to deny that, and it’s coming out in fiddling with everything around the room. He wonders if Hank would know more about the sonogram machine, if he could explain it better, feeling an awful pang of longing for his best friend at that moment. Until the cup bounces off his head, drawing his attention back to Jean. He stifles a laugh, raising an eyebrow at her. Before he can say anything though, the door opens and the doctor walks in.

[wreakhavck-archive]

telepathological‌:

Jean feels her anger swell til it feels like she’s breathing fire. Huffing so hard to keep from sobbing at the thought of him so willing to toss her away. He never would fight for her, would he? Normally she’d be grabbing whatever was nearest to her and hurling it at him. Maybe even try her best to hurt him with her fists, much smaller than his. But the pain she felt was consuming her whole and just breathing was too much movement for her right now.

“Fine,” she says, voice hard. “Fine, you want to know what I think? I think you’re half-assing this the way you half-ass everything. I think you have one foot out the fucking door, so that you don’t have to commit to anything.” She knows she should stop, that they both needed to walk away and let their heads cool before this turned into something it wasn’t. But she can’t. “You want to talk about Scott? If it were him who knocked me up, I’d have a ring on my finger already.”

He freezes in place at her accusations. Even breathing seems like too much movement. His anger can’t decide if he wants to explode or if it’s going to fizzle up into nothing and leave him empty. But the comment about Scott is one step too far. It’s too much. “Go back to him then. Let him put a ring on your finger,” he replies, his voice tight. “He’ll give you what you want.” What he couldn’t.

With that, he opens the door, heading out into the cold. The door shuts sharply behind him, his footsteps crunching in the silence almost deafeningly.

[wreakhavck-archive]

telepathological‌:

Jean freezes up, staring at him with her mouth open and unable to make any sound come out. What was it like? Like Scott texted her about missing her and she decided to call him at two in the morning? Like she was opening a door she should have left closed? There was no way of explaining this without Alex finding fault in her logic. 

But it was unfair of him to accuse her like that, of regretting what they’d built together. And she lets it make her defensive, she lets her panic be consumed by the anger he knew so well and she glares at him hard. “Just because you’re insecure about the way you love me doesn’t mean you get to put shit on me.”

Maybe he did doubt it, doubt this. Because it doesn’t make a whole lot of damn sense. And the last thing he wants is her staying because she feels she has to, that she ought to. Not if she’d be happier elsewhere. Hadn’t Hank warned him enough times that he’d only hurt her? Hadn’t enough people warned him he’d just hurt people?

He pushes it away, focusing instead on what was easier to fault. “That’s not an answer,” he replies, pulling his jacket on. He knows he loves her, but was that enough? They’d tried to make it enough, but...

[wreakhavck-archive]

telecoded‌:

Madelyne knew that name as his mother’s, and she knew how much he loved and missed her. She smiles up at him, “Katherine Summers.” She looks back at the baby, picking her up carefully and offering her to her husband to hold. “Little Katie,” she murmurs, stroking the girl’s cheek once she’s in Alex’s arms. “She’s a strong girl, don’t you think?”

Alex nods, returning her smile. As he takes the child, his movements are a little stiff--it’s been a long time since he held a baby and she seems so fragile in his arms. “She is,” he murmurs, looking down at the orange eyed baby. Already he felt a protectiveness for her; and he knew that unless the parents came back he’d be hardpressed to give this child up. Hell, even if the parents did return. “Do we have what we need to care for her?”

[wreakhavck-archive]

telecoded‌:

Maddy didn’t have an answer for that, but it does raise another question. “What if her parents are dead? Or worse, what if they’re who she ran away from?” It felt silly, suggesting a baby was capable of running away, but people like them were capable of a lot of things. The baby seems to be reaching for her bright red hair next, which makes Maddy smile wide. “You like that, huh?” she murmurs, brushing her hand over the fine, yellow hair covering the baby’s head. “What shall we call her, Alex?”

Alex presses his lips together, but he can’t help the smile as the baby reaches for Maddy’s hair. They would have to keep her, care for her. He knew what the orphanage was like, and he didn’t care to leave another child there. No, they would manage to care for her themselves, at least until they found where she came from. “A name?” He’s caught off guard, and so says the first name to come to his mind. “Katherine?” It’s his mother’s name, or was. A family name.

[wreakhavck-archive]

telepathological‌:

Jean can pinpoint the exact moment fear turns to panic. She shouldn’t be in his head, she promised him she wouldn’t. But she can see and feel his betrayal, a new wave of tears rushing to her eyes. “Stop,” she rushes to him, trying to grab his jacket out of his hand. “Alex, stop- Don’t.”

“It’s not-” she tries to explain it away, her tears clogging her throat as she wrestles for his jacket but ends up giving up. She backs away, hands frozen in the same position. “It wasn’t like that!”

Alex pulls his jacket from her hands, but it does succeed in stopping him and making him turn around to face her. And seeing her panicked expression gives him pause as she backs away. The tears in her eyes forming a lump in his throat.

“Then what was it like?” he asks, hiding his hurt behind anger. “Sounded a lot like regretting this.” Could he blame her?

[telecoded]

wreakhavck‌:

Alex is relieved that she’s okay, that the baby’s okay. But Maddy is only a few months pregnant. There should be no baby noises coming from their bedroom. So when she leads him into their bedroom and he sees a baby girl lying on the bed, his breath catches. “What….” She’d told him not to panic but it’s hard not to feel a little bit of it. And her eyes… “Madelyne, what’s going on?”

Maddy bites her lip, peering around him at the little girl who gives a yawn that’s nearly too precious to handle. “I…” she shrugs, sitting down on the bed beside the baby. “She’s a newborn, Alex. She just… appeared out of nowhere.” The baby grabs her finger when she taps her teeny palm and Maddy smiles softly. “I was sleeping, and I opened my eyes and… There she was.” She looks up at Alex, worry gnawing at her belly at his expression. “We have to take care of her.”

[wreakhavck-archive]

Alex is confused. That’s his first thought, confusion. Especially when Maddy says that the child just appeard from nowhere. But as the baby reaches for Maddy’s finger, he feels part of him melt. The child was so tiny, impossibly so. When Maddy says they have to take care of her, he knows he can’t say no. “She’s like us then,” he says. “Powered. What if her parents are looking for her?”