When Scott finally makes it back to the mansion, Logan is waiting outside for him, leaning against a column, smoking, and watching his approach, which Scott steadfastly refuses to either hasten or slow just because he’s being watched. He marches, even measured in every pace, with his bag slung over one shoulder and his motorcycle behind him, leaned on its kickstand in the horseshoe driveway -- he’ll come back to move it to the garage later.

"Spring break over already?" Logan asks when he’s in earshot, most of the way up the entrance steps.

It’s nominally a greeting, even if it’s clearly designed to get a rise out of him. "Wrong season," Scott says, answering without answering, nitpicking the difference between spring and summer so he doesn’t have to wonder what Logan meant by a question like that, so he doesn’t have to admit he cares at all.

Logan grunts like he was expecting as much of a non-response. "Jeannie’s waiting for you in the Professor’s office," he tells Scott instead. "By my watch, you’re a few days late." Scott just pushes past his teammate and through the lofty double doors at the entrance, the way he has after a thousand weekend trips into the city, the way he’s been doing since he was a teenager. He doesn’t even bother to drop his bag off in his room before heading to Charles’ office, more bothered by the insinuation that he could be late to a meeting he didn’t even know about than he’d like to admit.

It’s genuinely a surprise, a disappointment, a drop in his chest, to realize it still hurt to hear Logan call her Jeannie with so much familiarity, Scott only realizing now he hadn’t expected to feel that old jealousy anymore, not this summer, not after last night, not when Emma -- No, he's not thinking about it, didn't even let his thoughts get as far as her name, hasn't thought it once all morning, not once. There's nothing to be worried about. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to stuff quickly behind the partition in his mind, the place he knows other secrets hide, ones even he doesn't know. He's just -- not thinking about it.

He's not thinking about anything. His mind is blank. Nothing but red. All he is thinking about is Jean, seated behind the desk, looking up from whatever she’s writing when he walks in. That's a nice gesture, since she probably knew he was here since the minute he set foot on the grounds, had probably been the one to send Logan out to meet him in the first place.

"Wow, is spring break really over already?" she asks, but with a laugh, like she doesn’t mean any harm, like she’s just joking with him, like they’re students again.

He used to hate it when she teased him, worried it meant she thought he was frivolous, irresponsible, immature, and Scott doesn’t feel any of those things now but he still rolls his eyes as he pulls up a chair opposite her. He almost feels nostalgic for it, the way her sweet smile used to make him want the earth to swallow him whole. "Logan already made that joke outside," he says, that serious tone like he regrets to inform her.

Jean wrinkles her nose, foiled. "Well, he stole it from me," she complains good-naturedly.

There it is, that ancient feeling he almost thought for a second he missed -- Scott feels like he’s the target of some inside joke and burns with embarrassment, hates the thought of Jean and Logan laughing together about him at some point during the weekend. "Where’s the professor?" he asks instead, surprised the other man isn’t already here.

Jean sighs and the smile drops from her face so quickly even Scott feels unmoored in its absence. "We’re... not sure," she confesses, and she looks like she’s taking a deep breath before she speaks again but Scott interrupts her.

"What?" He’s tense, suddenly, and behind the surprise is fear, and behind that is the red partition over anything else he might be thinking about.

His wife’s expression is a grimace, but one of discomfort, not panic. "He left sometime during the night on Saturday. No signs of struggle --"

"That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one," Scott points out.

"-- And nothing that hit the radar of any of the telepaths who were in the mansion at the time either," Jean says over him, "Including Betsy, Nathan, and me." Okay, so maybe he didn’t have to point it out. "He left a note, Scott. Charles has to handle important business elsewhere." It’s Jean’s voice, but Scott has no doubt she’s parroting whatever the note said, their professor once again treating his favorite student as a mouthpiece for his own words. "He’ll be back as soon as he can."

"You didn’t call me," Scott notes, since there’s no more avenue to argue the need for an investigation. Disappearing with little more than a be good, kids isn't exactly out of character for the headmaster. "I would have --"

"Come home?" Jean finishes his sentence for him, and he wants to complain about it, but her raised eyebrows tell him that it’s what he deserves for interrupting about foul play only seconds ago. "There was nothing to report, Scott. The Professor stepped out. The school is fine. Logan and Ro are here, I’m here --"

But Scott wasn’t, and it doesn’t take an implication in Jean’s voice for him to start berating himself for it. "You didn’t even want to pick up the phone?" Now he's couching accusations in the tone of a question, annoying himself as much as he's probably annoying her. "You didn’t think I’d want to know that nobody knows where Charles is? Because historically, Jean, that just means his fight is about to come to us, and this team is not prepared for that."

Jean is setting her jaw, she’s putting her palms flat agains the desk, she’s spending a beat just staring at him like she’s waiting for him to hear for himself how stupid he sounds. "Logan is here," she repeats with emphasis, "Ororo is here. I am here. If we had to, we’d scramble the advanced students --"

“They’re students,” Scott interrupts again, because it’s his turn now, falling into the rhythm of it even if he isn’t sure how he got here. Just minutes ago he was going up the front steps and shrugging off Logan’s unwelcome joke, but suddenly here he is, angry at having to be the only person in the room to remind Jean that the kids are just that, can’t be drafted into the professor’s conflict just because they’re around -- and it strikes him for the thousandth time how alike Jean and Charles are, how he has always been on the outside of their shared mindset.

Jean doesn’t even blink. “So were we, and look what we were capable of.“

“You didn’t call me.” He doesn’t want to hear her talk any more about their time as the First Class, doesn’t want to listen to her repeat Charles’ justifications for sending students into life or death situations just like he’d done with Scott and Jean, Warren, Hank, Bobby, all of them, not so long ago. It’s upsetting to think of the next generation getting militarized just like they had, and he'd love to have that fight again, but that’s not the real thing that has him feeling outraged and defensive. It’s that something happened and he wasn’t here for it. It’s that his own wife didn’t even bother to let him know.

“I didn’t call you,” Jean admits, placating him like she too wants to abandon the argument they could be having about what the students were ready for, “Because this is not an emergency, and even if it was, I have it under control while you were on one of your little spring break trips.”

“Stop calling it that," he snaps, "I don’t know why you’re calling it that.” Spring break, like he was some irresponsible college kid off on a beach somewhere, like it was his one chance a year to make stupid decisions with a built in excuse, like he'd ever be able to blame one glass of whiskey for -- no, no, none of that was on his mind now, all of it behind a red partition, but clamoring.

“Scott,” his wife says, and the tone of her voice makes him realize she really is trying to reason with him, she really doesn’t understand why he’s so offended. “Come on.” She even pauses, like she’s waiting for him to catch up, but Scott just stares at her like he has no idea what he’s missing, like he’s still the target of someone else’s inside joke. He’s not getting it, and suddenly Jean is getting even softer, talking to him in that tone of voice he’s been hearing from people all his life when they realize not all of his memories line up in the right order. “You’ve done this since we were teenagers. You get overwhelmed, you start pushing everybody away, then you go on a trip for a while, get some space, and you remember what’s important to you.”

She’s so patient, hesitantly telling him something about himself that he didn’t realize before, and it’s like Scott’s outside himself looking back on a pattern of his own behavior, all the times he had to just get away from this house before somebody noticed his control was slipping and he wasn’t what he wanted to be. It must be the distraction Jean’s been waiting for because while he’s trying to figure out when exactly he picked up this habit and why he’d never noticed it before, she keeps talking, slow and gentle, like she’s luring a stray dog in off the streets. “It’s not a bad thing. A part of you just wants to make sure that you can still drink cheap beer and hustle pool if you ever need to. It’s okay.”

Does she know that because she loves him or because she’s been in his head? Does he care? It’s Jean, she’s giving him those big green eyes that at eighteen Scott would have done absolutely anything for, and he’s missed this so much, this feeling like she knows him, really knows him, better than he’ll ever know himself. Does she know? Is this a trap, or is his own guilt just making him paranoid that it is? How could Jean know — he’s not even thinking about Emma, he’s not, except of course he is, the last press of her lips on his playing out in kaleidoscope formation, the thought behind every other thought he’s had all morning. This ability he has to just put away the things he can’t confront, it only ever lasts for so long, and now in record time Scott feels it crumbling, feels a confession clawing up his throat, “Jean, I --“

“It’s okay, I know, it doesn't hurt my feelings,” she says, and it’s exactly what Scott doesn’t deserve to hear which is what makes it so disorienting, shutting him up so quickly he practically chokes on the rest of what he was going to say. "You've been mad at me all summer, Scott, but I'm not going to fight with you."

And he realizes all of a sudden she's not in his head at all, hasn't been this whole time, and probably not for a long time before that either. He's been fooling himself if he thought she was, in more ways than one. The first rush of it is a lonely feeling, but the second is exhaustion and he's grateful because it's overwhelming and forces every other thought right back into red. "I just got back, Jean," Scott says, slumping in the chair, pushing his glasses up to rub at his eyes underneath them, convenient for the way it means he doesn't have to look at her. "I haven't even put my bag down, do we have to do this now?" Like he hadn't been impatient with her for months at this point, trying to force the issue without having to bring it up himself.

Jean knows it, too, but she's better than him a thousand times over because she just takes a beat to process, and then says simply, "We can do it whenever you want. I'm not the one who's angry. I'm your wife, and I love you, and when you're ready to stop being mad at me I will be right here." Right here, in this office, behind this desk, waiting on him like she's seen the future and knows it will be here when it happens.

It just doesn't seem right for Jean to act like she knows the ending already, that things are predestined to work out between them so all she has to do is wait out the hard stuff. Nothing else makes Scott feel so ungrateful, like he's betraying the old version of himself who ached for someone to love him with this much certainty, but the truth is that now he has it, and he wishes Jean had a little less faith, that they argued a little bit more. He wants her to be afraid of losing him the way he's lost her over and over again, and that's a miserable, ugly thought he can't shake. Scott's supposed to be someone who stands up to fight every day so no one else has to go through what he has -- he's a soldier so one day the students won't have to be -- but here he is, wishing Jean was scared and hurt so he'd know how to talk to her again, and this isn't the first time he's thought that, he knows it's always the first domino that falls in a train of thought that leaves him wondering who the hell he is anymore because he's certainly not a good soldier or a good husband and those were pretty much the only two pillars left standing in his mind after so much telepathic smash-grab interference.

Jean's waiting on his reply, watching him closely without rushing him. Scott's not sure what shows on his face, probably nothing because he was never good at that either, but he's certain she's not listening in on his thoughts, leaving him on his own to figure it all out, and that's a shame because as fast as the feelings come they collapse in on themselves and he can't keep track of it all, not in any coherent way. He's tired. He was up all night. He'd rather be alone, feeling guilty about what he'd done last night as the perfect excuse to keep thinking about it, the way Emma's body moved and the way she looked with her eyes shut. And anyway, Jean's going to be right here so he'll know where to find her.

"Great," he says shortly, rising quickly out of the chair and moving towards the door like he can't leave fast enough, "Good to know, Jean."

It's dismissive and it's abrupt and it's cowardly, and he knows that, which is why he also knows he deserves it when his wife calls out from behind him, "Scott -- close the door on your way out."