Jean meets the builder. [for Forge!]

[and_intothefire]

Since St. Petersburg and going after Olivia with Victor, Jean was incredibly restless. She needed to approach Stryker, find out just what the fuck he'd been thinking about sending someone to follow her. To do that, though, she needed leverage

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[forgebyfire]

Forge was tucked into a corner of the garage. He had dragged a workbench over from near the bay doors and it was obvious, at least to him, that the surface was merely temporary--there was after all some wood to be seen through the mess of machinary littering the table.

Someone had destroyed one of the MP's Jeeps; the hood was crumpled and most of the metal (both inner and outer, thank you) was rather... crispy. Forge had yanked out all the salvagable parts; most were on the table but bigger bits were scattered around the floor and he was on his back on casters, halfway under the corpse of the vehicle.

Carbonization was not, surpisingly, conduscive to machinery. Go figure

[and_intothefire]

Jean looked him over, noting the physical things about him. The way he was dressed, his mannerisms, the fact that he was probably considered attractive to someone looking for that type of thing. Jean, however, was not. Her eyes surveyed the mass of parts that had been taken off the thing that must have once been a Jeep.

Interesting.

"I haven't met you yet," Jean drawled, sauntering over to let her hip lean against the hood of a non-demolished Jeep. She eyed him, and let her mind reach out a little. There was something different about this mind. "I'm Jean."

[forgebyfire]

Forge's eyes followed her. The way redhead moved, spoke... if he had to put it into recent context he would have said that she seemed the exact opposite of Olivia. If the meek woman he'd met in the rec room had been prey, then this Jean was--

A predator.

There was no response to the thought. His heart kept on beating at the same even rate and his respiration a slow in and out, almost misting in the cold air. Forge didn't even get off his back. "Forge." He pointed to a pair of metal cutters sitting near her feet. "Do you mind?"

Assumptions were never anything but foolhardy.

[and_intothefire]

She caught a quick flash of the word predator. Perceptive, this one. She rounded her way of approaching him, calming down a smidge on the possible aggression she might have been showing. Not much, though. Meek didn't suit her.

She didn't like that he'd caught on, though.

She stooped and grabbed the metal cutters, taking a few steps in to hand them over. She stayed stooped, looping an arm around her knees and craning her head to see what he was up to. "Quite the project. Any idea what happened to it?"

[forgebyfire]

Ah, so Jean's softness was like a coat, taken on and off and maybe something that she wasn't comfortable wearing. The sharper expression seemed so much more natural--a reflex, say, instead of a thought.

Forge's eyes followed the screwdriver as it lifted from the ground seemingly of its own accord. That was... impressive. Handy. He'd never met a telekinetic. His attention remained on the tool until Jean's fingers were wrapping around it. It was obvious that her confidence extended to the use of her power not only did Forge understand that, but welcomed it as a positive thing. Perhaps one of the reasons that he had agreed to help Olivia was because he recognized someone who, like a younger version of himself, had struggled to come to terms with what he could do. What he wasWhen Jean pressed in closer a crease formed between Forge's eyebrows. He didn't move, not away and certainly not toward, his arm only stone-still holding the screwdriver as her fingertips left a line of heat against the pulse of his good wrist. He was frowning again

[and_intothefire]

She stayed at the distance she'd left between them, raising a brow at the change in his expression. Her eyes roamed his face, still smiling at him. "Good, I hope you will."

Jean wanted to know how far to push, but there was no real gauge for her. She didn't like flying blind. It was the reason she hated being around other telepaths and felt especially threatened by them. He was no telepath, but there were walls she hadn't experienced before in his mind. Ones that intimidated her.

That wasn't to say she wouldn't eventually try to pull them down, if necessary. For now, she left them alone. "So how does your ability work, really? If someone were to describe something to you, or, say, give you blueprints, you'd be able to build it easily?"

[forgebyfire]

Forge finally moved; he didn't quite step back cleanly enough for it to be called a retreat (and why did he think that it would be taken that way with Jean? A retreat.) but made a sideways motion that allowed him the room to walk past her. He set the screwdriver down on the black hood of the Jeep along with the metal cutters and had started around the other corner when he was stopped completely by her question. Forge lifted his attention, steady dark eyes regarding Jean in silence for a moment long enough to make a normal person feel awkward.

Asking a fellow mutant his or her ability when everyone was living in close quarters with them was an excusable bit of prying. But Jean's question was specific enough to put Forge's hackles up just a little bit, if for no other reason than the sake of maintaining personal boundaries--no matter how superficial they would be in a place like this.

Finally Forge shrugged. "I can see mechanical energy. How parts fit together, their potentials. I can build--" something made him gloss over saying

[and_intothefire]

Her teeth set as he moved away from her, Jean feeling that challenge, the challenge of someone who wasn't interested in feminine wiles. So, she couldn't get into his head yet, and getting into his pants was going to be hard. She was assuming the first wasn't impossible, overconfidence in her abilities and all. The second was made more difficult, depending on the first.

Then again, his answer pleased her. He could build it. Of course the blueprints were sound; it had already been built once. Her eyes flared. Now it was just a matter of convincing him to give it a shot.

She did have to approach Stryker first, though. She knew he'd be more than interested.

"That's interesting," she purred, her voice low. Her eyes didn't shift from his as he stared her down. In fact, she welcomed that part of the challenge.