It began with a dream, his or hers.
His, Jean would think, when she was awake and had the chance to sift through everything, instead of just going along, the way almost everyone did in dreams. It had to be his, because she never dreamed about the Professor—or even if she did, it wouldn't have been like this.
The dream began in the hallway, just outside the Professor's office. Jean needed to talk to him about something very urgent, though she couldn't remember exactly what it was. Someone, she couldn't remember who, had told her to wait. So she did, sitting on that bench as the air around her grew warmer and warmer, until it was hotter than summer. The wallpaper sizzled, rising up in welts, but still she sat there, black dread filling her, until she couldn't stand it anymore, she had to interrupt the Professor's important meeting.
She got up, and flung the door open. "Professor, I'm sorry, but I—" and then she stopped, taking in what was happening. There was a girl in the Professor's lap. They were kissing. Her hands were in his hair; one of his was at the small of her back, the other on her thigh.
Is that all? Jean thought, and even in the dream she knew it didn't make sense that the dread had gone away, dissipated like fog in strong sunlight. It didn't make sense because the girl wasn't someone else—the girl was Jean herself.
She stood there for a long time, watching the kisses get more heated, and the Professor's hand move up and up, under the other Jean's skirt, then between her thighs. The other Jean's skirt was rucked up enough that it was easy to see the motion of his fingers as they rubbed back and forth over her panties.
Then, suddenly, the scene changed. Instead of it being the other Jean, it was her—she was straddling the Professor's lap, as he rubbed her there, and oh, God, she ached, and she wanted...she wanted...
"More," she said, rolling her hips against his fingers, chasing after something that seemed like it might slip away at any second, the way it so often did when she touched herself under the covers at night. "More, please, more."
"All right, love," he said, and his hand, so warm and dry, slid beneath her panties, and then between her lips, touching her where no one had ever touched her before.
He rubbed her clit, and it was barely enough and too much, all at the same time, and Jean cried out as she came, shaking against him.
"Shh, shh," he said, rubbing her back, and then something else changed, and he said, with a dawning horror that eclipsed anything Jean had felt out in the corridor, "...Jean?"
And that was when she woke up.
***
She lay in the dark for a long time, aching and confused. Aching because she always did after sex dreams, or even after just thinking about sex for too long. Confused because...she didn't think of the Professor that way. A lot of the other girls did, and even some of the boys, but she didn't. And if he really had been in her dream with her, the way it had seemed, then that meant he did think of her like that...only he didn't. She'd been in his head, and she knew that he didn't. You couldn't hide something like that from another telepath. You could try, but secrets always came out. That was how Jean knew about what the Professor's real relationship with Erik Lehnsherr had been, and how she knew that Raven Darkholme was his adopted sister. No one else knew those things, except probably Dr. McCoy. The Professor had tried to hide them from her, but eventually she had seen them anyway, just like he'd seen so many things about her she'd tried to keep from him.
Usually, a dream like that would have made her put her hand between her legs until she got off. She wasn't going to be able to sleep again unless she did. But her other dreams had always been of faceless shadows doing vague things—not of a person she knew doing something so specific. Not of a person who would be able to find out (even accidentally) that she had masturbated after dreaming about him.
So she lay there until dawn, arms ramrod straight by her sides, trying to decide whose dream it had been, and in the end she decided that it had definitely been his.
***
The next afternoon, she had a personal tutoring session with the Professor, to help her with her telepathy. They'd had them for years, ever since she'd come to the school.
When she sat down across from the Professor—she had almost told his secretary she wasn't feeling well enough today, but hadn't because if she ran away from everything embarrassing that ever happened, she'd be running forever—she found that she couldn't look him in the eye. Not until he said, "Jean. About what happened—"
"Do we have to talk about it?" she interrupted.
"Not in detail. But yes, a little," he said. "What happened was inappropriate, and I apologize. It won't happen again."
Even then and there, Jean knew there was no way he could promise that. They'd been trying to fix her other dreams since she'd been enrolled, and nothing had ever worked. Most people could barely control their waking thoughts and feelings, never mind what they thought and felt in their dreams. But she didn't want to talk about it, and when she glanced up at him, it was clear from how red he was that he didn't want to, either. So in the end, she just said, "Okay."
Their session went on as planned. When Jean thought the Professor wasn't looking, she peeked around in his mind a little, looking for anything that would tell her if he actually did think that way about her. But all she found was how horrified he was at himself, and how he didn't understand where that had come from either, because he didn't...no, he couldn't feel that way about one of his students.
If it seemed a little bit forced, Jean wasn't going to push him about it. After all, he was the one who'd taught her that it was usually best to leave well enough alone, when it came to what you found in other people's minds.
***
In the next dream, a few nights later, Jean didn't question it when he came to her bed. There was nothing to question; he'd come to her so many times, in the aftermath of so many dark dreams. He'd come to her before, and so it didn't seem strange that this time he'd come for neither fire nor death—nor strange that he'd left Dr. McCoy somewhere else, and closed the door.
He transfered to the side of her bed, as he had so often before. "You are lovely," he said, reaching to cup her face against his hand, and to pet her hair.
I'm dreaming, Jean thought, and the thought also came: I could stop it.
But in dreams it was always easier to go along, and his hand brushing against her ear had made arousal shock through her. Her heart raced, and when he leaned down to kiss her, she kissed him back. Soon he was lying next to her, and in the dream it didn't really matter how he had done it. His hand was on her waist for a long time, and then ran upward, until he was tracing her nipple above her scratchy nightgown. He kissed her neck, trailed kisses down to her breast, then took her nipple into his mouth, and sucked and sucked through the fabric of her nightgown.
Just as his hand had reached between her legs, another thought came: No. You don't want this. Neither do I.
Then he was gone, and Jean was awake again, aching even worse this time.
And this time she couldn't even tell herself that it had been his dream—because she was entirely certain, then and ever after, that this dream had been hers.
***
This time, they didn't talk about it.
***
In the dream after that, they were in the Professor's office again. This time, it was different. She was sitting on the side of his desk, and he was standing in front of her. Her legs were around his waist, his hands holding her thighs in place, something hard rubbing against her damp panties. His penis, she realized. He had an erection. Somehow, it made her ache more than his fingers, more than his mouth.
"Can I?" he asked. "God, I want you so much."
"I think that's the first honest thing you've said," Jean said, and she didn't want him, he was her teacher and she didn't...but she wanted him right then.
"Please," and it was so obvious what he meant. "Please."
Jean reached for his belt buckle, helped him push his pants and underwear down. Her panties had disappeared somewhere, something she wondered about even though she knew she shouldn't, not in a dream.
"Turn around," he said, and she did, and he spread her legs wider than then were, and then he pushed himself inside, stretching her open and then, just as he began to move—
This time he didn't say anything. The dream just ended. Jean woke up in the darkness, as she had twice before, and this time she couldn't help it. She ached so much, wanted so badly, (even though she didn't actually want him, not her teacher, he was just her teacher and nothing more), and so she rolled over onto her belly, and slid her hand beneath her body, down her stomach and into her panties, and rolled her hips against her fingers, faster and faster, until she went over, her inner muscles clenching around something that had never really been there.
She waited until her breathing had slowed, and until her mind was as calm as it was going to get, before doing what she hadn't dared to do the other two times: she reached for the Professor's mind, quietly, like tiptoeing down the stairs after everyone else had gone to sleep, to see if he'd noticed what she had been doing.
He had noticed. That was the first thing she saw. Just for a second, and then he'd drawn away, like he'd touched a hot burner on a stove. And he'd tried to put it out of his mind, but it hadn't worked, and now he was—
She watched him for much longer than she thought he had watched her. He was pinching his nipple with one hand, and pumping himself with the other. And the whole time he was thinking of her, not of the dream but of her, on her stomach with her hands between her legs while thinking of what they'd done in the dream. At the same time, he was telling himself that he didn't want her, he didn't, he was her teacher and her guardian and old enough to be her father and he didn't. No matter how beautiful she was, no matter how well they understood each other, no matter how well she knew him and he her, he didn't—
He was still thinking that when he came, the first time he'd come in more than a year, the first time in much longer than that it had been satisfying, and how could that be true when he didn't—
Jean drew back, and found that she was aching again, and even more wet than she had been before.
***
They still didn't talk about it, but Jean no longer felt like avoiding the subject. Not when it was so clear that the Professor did want her like that, no matter what he told himself. Not when he'd made her feel—
She didn't feel like avoiding it. But every time she decided to confront he, he canceled their meeting, or changed the subject, or simply turned his chair around and drove away.
So finally, a week later, she took matters into her own hands. In the middle of philosophy class, she began to think about it, crisp and in full color: everything they had done in the dreams. The Professor began to look a little flushed. Then she expanded on the dream, and thought about if she were in his lap again, not in his office but in this classroom, right in front of the blackboard he was writing on right now. She thought about letting him take her panties off, and her sliding onto the part of him she'd seen so clearly through his own eyes that night, as he...
The Professor was really red now, and then the daydream changed. Jean wasn't in control of it anymore. Now she was on her back on his desk, her legs hanging over his shoulders, his face between her legs as he licked her, between her folds and around her clit and everywhere.
When the bell rang, he said, "Jean, please stay behind, if you have a moment."
"Okay," she said, and waited until the last of the other students had run out to walk over to his desk.
She could see it in his mind, clear as anything. Next period was lunch, so he could—they would—
'That wasn't what I meant,' Jean meant to say, but...had it been? She was aching again, her panties soaked through. She wasn't even sure when that had happened.
The Professor looked at her for what seemed like a long time. Then he said, his knuckles so white as he gripped the armrests of his chair that she could feel the ache in her own hands, "—No. This is not happening. Go to lunch."
Before he could say anything else, Jean turned, and fled.
***
In the next dream, that night, they were on his bed, and his hands were between her legs again. Then his face was, and then he was on top of her, thrusting in and out of her.
She would never know just when the dream ended. At some point, it must have, because neither of them was asleep anymore—but it kept going anyway, a dream they were making on purpose, as she put a pillow between her legs and rubbed off against it, and as he twisted his nipple again, and pumped his erection in his fist again. She could feel everything, and she knew he could, too. His harsh breathing was hers, and her release was his, and they weren't even in the same room, but they were one in wanting what neither of them thought they did.
***
They didn't talk about it then, either—and two days later, En Sabah Nur came.
The dreams stopped, after that. Jean thought they might come back once the school was rebuilt, but they didn't. Then, she thought they might come back when Erik Lehnsherr had gone, but that didn't happen either.
She hadn't thought she wanted the Professor, not like that, but now she missed him more than she would have thought possible. Even though she saw him every day, and he was as warm and as kind as he'd always been to her, and they'd somehow managed not to hold any of it against each other, somehow they'd both done that much...but still, it felt like something was missing.
Two weeks after classes resumed, Jean turned eighteen. It seemed as good an excuse as any, and so she waited until everyone else had gone to sleep, and she wrapped her robe around herself. She walked down one hall and then another until she came to the Professor's bedroom. She opened the door with a wave of her hand, and closed it the same way after slipping in.
The Professor was sitting up in bed, reading by lamplight. He didn't know she was there until she let him see her.
"Jean," he said with a start. "What are you—"
She let the robe fall. Underneath, she was wearing only a t-shirt, one that went down to mid-thigh. She'd meant to come wearing nothing but the robe, but at the last minute she'd decided she would feel too exposed to start off like that.
She felt too exposed anyway, but she said, "I want this. I know you do, too."
"You're very wrong about that," but his breathing had quickened, and his voice was unsteady, and he was beginning to think of everything he'd told himself to forget.
"You told me to let go," she said, walking toward the bed. Somewhere, she found the courage to pull the t-shirt over her head, to drop it on the floor and climb onto the bed, just as she was. "You should let go, too."
She straddled his lap. Even now, he could have made her leave—well, no, he couldn't make her, but he could have exerted enough force on her mind to make himself really clear. He could have, but he didn't even try.
"Jean," he said, looking from her face to her breasts to the red crinkly hair between her thighs. "You don't want this. I know you don't. You don't have to do this."
"I know. I do want to. So do you. Let's stop lying to each other, Charles. And let's stop lying to ourselves, too." She'd never thought of him as anything but the Professor before, but now she knew she would never think of him quite that way again.
"You're so lovely. I've never known lovelier," he said, and his desire was everywhere now, in his mind and in his face and in his hands as they came to rest on her bare waist. "Yes, all right. I want you. Very badly, in fact."
Then she leaned forward, and she kissed him, and it was—she'd thought it would be the same as it had been in the dreams. She didn't know why she'd thought something so stupid, not when she already know that telepathy was a filter, and everything you saw with it was at a distance. That was why the things that happened to you for the first time were always surprising, even if you'd experienced them through other people's eyes a thousand times.
She'd thought the dreams had made her feel desperate, but it had been nothing compared to this—his warm hands on her skin, his wet mouth on her jaw, her neck, around one nipple and then the other. And when he slid his hand between her legs for real, his fingers parting her lips to find her clit the way they had before in their dreams, she said, "Oh, God, oh my God." He rubbed her there, and rubbed her, and she didn't have to chase anything this time, it just came, a white-hot tremor through her entire body.
"Oh, God," she said again. Please don't stop, please...
I wouldn't dare, he said, and slipped a finger into her, and she'd thought she knew what that felt like, too, since she'd done that much for herself...but she hadn't known how different it would be, with someone else touching her...
She came twice more, and then she saw how flushed he was, and before she even looked down she felt how hard and huge he was.
Despite how good the rest had been, she realized she was a little nervous about this next part. It had never hurt in the dreams, but those had been dreams.
We don't have to, Charles began, and she shut him up by doing something she'd seen in his mind, something that hadn't happened in the dreams, because he thought it was too silly, or he'd been embarrassed: she took his earlobe in her mouth, and began to suck on it.
The dreams had always been about her, more than they'd been about him. They'd been about what he was doing to her, how he made her feel, and only tangentially about how doing things to her made him feel. So she hadn't known, before, that he would groan helplessly when she did this. She hadn't heard him gasp or cry out in pleasure at her touch. She hadn't known that he could shake apart, too.
It made her feel powerful, even moreso than it had to come to him like this in the first place. The nervousness faded away, until she wanted him inside her, more than she ever had before.
"All right," he said. "All right." Just, let me—
She backed off for a minute as he lifted himself up and slid his pajama bottoms down his thighs. He was red, and huge, but something to be conquered, not feared. And so Jean straddled him again, and lowered himself onto him, letting him part the aching, swollen flesh between her thighs. It did hurt at first, but only a little, a stretch and burn she welcomed.
She began to move, found a rhythm, and soon she was chasing something deeper and more powerful than she had ever felt in a dream, or even when he had first touched her tonight. She pulled his earlobe into her mouth again, and he reached between her legs, rubbing her clit as she moved back and forth, back and forth.
She'd cried out, the other times she'd come, but those had been only little fires, after all. This was a raging inferno, devouring, and she screamed at its peak.
Somewhere in that inferno, he came, too, helpless not to follow her, and that made her feel powerful, too.
Coming back to herself afterward, Jean felt...calm, sated. It was the first time she had felt that way with him since all this had started—the safe way she'd always felt with him before this all started. If she'd thought about it, she would have thought that feeling had to change, if it ever came again. She was glad she hadn't thought about it, even gladder she would have been wrong if she had thought about it.
They lay there together for a long time, his arms around her shoulders, her head on his chest. She began to drift off.
"Are you staying all night, then?" he asked, but he must already have known the answer, because even as he said it, he reached to switch off the lamp.
"Mm-hmmm."
"I'll see you in your dreams, then," he said. "No funny business this time; we're going to have to lay down some ground rules."
Only they didn't get around to doing that until the next morning, for neither of them dreamed at all that night. The dreams weren't needed anymore. They'd served their purpose, no matter who had really started it, which was something Jean wondered about for a long time to come.
In the end, she decided it must have been both of them, together.