04 / 18 / 11 - Jean-Paul, Madrox
Madrox is doing his spider in the center of the web thinger and is watching the screens in his surveillance set-up in a small room near the kitchen. It's afternoonish and he's not looking terribly engaged, his chin propped on the cup of his hand, his eyes half-lidded, and his foot tap-tapping next to his chair leg. Tap tap tap.
Late to bed and late to rise, with his normal schedule thrown off by the necessities of sneaking around and spying on poor, defenseless journalists, Jean-Paul has been absent since shortly after waking and only now returns. He lets himself in the kitchen door, and while it might be funnier for him not to notice Madrox so close at hand, the wary (weary) watchfulness that defines his mood means he spots him fairly promptly. He folds away a thin, long blade of greenery to tuck it in a back pocket. His greeting coolly civil, he says, "Fission." Angling around to stop half a room distant, he glances at the screens. "Now that we know where they are I suppose we don't have to watch quite so closely."
Madrox angles a glance over his shoulder, his eyes initially still half-lidded, but he looks more alert by faintly staccato degrees. "Suppose not," he agrees with a mild straighten. "Is it just me, or are we slated in the Man's role an awful lot."
Thumb hooked in his back pocket, Jean-Paul doesn't quite smile. His tone dries toward a mild, sardonic edge: "We are the Man."
"Yeah, I guess. I don't /feel/ like the Man." Madrox opens his palm Jean-Paul-ward. "Do you?"
"Mm. What else, when we hold ourselves above so many laws?" Jean-Paul shrugs.
Madrox opens his mouth, closes it . . . then nods and resumes, "We do get away with a lot. I can see where a Daniel might decide we're dangerous. Or a Laura. For that matter."
Jean-Paul arches his eyebrows in an expression of mild skepticism. "Different tune than a week ago."
"I was being a shithead," Madrox says in half a mutter. "But there's a price to what good we do. I know."
Jean-Paul's skeptical expression fades, compressing to a closer-held composure. He does not acknowledge the mutter except to move past the issue: "Strange as it is, we act on behalf of the United States Government, with all that implies. If we're not the man, we are his agents." After a pause, he adds, "But it is kind of strange, sometimes."
"It's not what I ever envisioned myself being. The work, yeah, sure, it's what I wanted. The authority, the backing-- different. I don't know." Madrox turns in the seat and flicks his hand closed. "Maybe I spend a lot of time justifying it."
Narrowing his eyes, Jean-Paul is quiet a moment. He looks away. After a pause in which, perhaps, several possible replies were considered and set aside, he settles on a neutral, "Shed your illusions: no scrappy underdogs and rebels, us."
Madrox looks down at his curled in hand, then back up to Jean-Paul, his expression quiet, and quietly regretful. "We can dress it up scrappy, but we're still just men in black. Illusions shed."
Jean-Paul laughs, short and not as if he finds it all that funny. "Yeah. Well. At least we're the good guys."
"In this instance, we probably were. At least trying to be," Madrox says, looking a bit past Jean-Paul before his eyes settle properly on him. "But for all anyone knew, maybe we did unleash the virus."
Still looking away, Jean-Paul is still and his expression has changed little. The restless edge is confined to the fidget of his fingers, back and to the side, out of sight. "I sympathize with his search, although I find his methods abhorrent. I do not like our secrecy."
"No. I don't either. Of course, you and I are /out/. I can't even do missions in New York or Atlanta," Madrox adds as a weak sort of non-joke, running his fingers through his hair. "But for something as big as Darkwatch, maybe we should've had public accountability. Maybe, hell, the government should've owned to its mistake."
Jean-Paul shrugs. "I made the same argument before. Out or not." He shakes his head. "So long as we are a secret, it can be threatened. So long as we hide, we are vulnerable to exposure."
"But what happens after exposure?" Madrox asks.
Lifting his hands to hold them before him, Jean-Paul opens them. Empty. "I don't know. We answer for what we have done, good or ill."
"All right." Madrox looks down at his own, closed, hand, and back up again. "Fair is fair."
Hands falling, Jean-Paul hooks them back into his pockets. His gaze shifts across walls, doorways, and windows -- sliding past Madrox. "And, at the end of it, maybe there will even be an X-Factor remaining."
"Maybe. Would you do it?" Madrox asks, almost at a segue as he attempts to follow Jean-Paul's wandering gaze. "Would you out X-Factor, knowing that'd probably kill remaining part of it?"
Jean-Paul's gaze lingers on windows and doors as much as it lingers on anything. He says, "No," fairly readily, then lingers over it. "No. I wouldn't. But I would encourage Carpenter to push for public sanction, public recognition of what we have done. You?"
Madrox watches the door, then, to watch it. "Yes," he says. Readily.
Startled, Jean-Paul glances at Madrox. "Why haven't you?"
"I would /encourage/," Madrox says, deflecting his glance back to Jean-Paul. "Not out. I might have ten lives, but this is my home, Jean-Paul. You are--" He hesitates and, "I couldn't out X-Factor if it meant leaving it."
Gaze skipping back away when Madrox looks over, Jean-Paul tips his head in a brief nod. "Yeah." Fingers twitch in some stifled gesture or fidget. "Maybe we can send around a petition."
"Okay," Madrox says with a small half-smile over Jean-Paul's ear. "I can help draft it."
"Great." Jean-Paul pushes off his heels, stillness become movement, and moves to head deeper into the borrowed house. "I should stop distracting you. Later."
"There's nothing to distract me from," Madrox says with suddenly voiced frustration, hooking his elbow over the back of his chair.
Glancing sidelong, Jean-Paul looks roughly at Madrox's elbow. "Well, if you're losing focus because you're bored I can spell you in a bit." His is mild -- bland -- in response to frustration. "Better that than miss something."
"Yeah. Sure." And Madrox looks away and back to the screens. "Sorry for my shitheadism. We can draft later. If you feel like it sometime," he says, a little dull and entirely deflected.
Glancing up to watch Madrox with a spark of anger in his eyes, Jean-Paul says something pithy and French and very definitely a curse.
Madrox looks back over his shoulder with his eyebrows raised. "Can we just have it out?"
Opening his hands as if throwing something between them, Jean-Paul gestures sharply in the splay of fingers. "What the hell do you want from me, Jamie?"
"What do you want from me?" Madrox non-counters. "It's a week ago and you're still /avoiding/ me, even if we're in the same room. I'm sorry I yelled at you. It was stupid. But I'm not still mad at /you/."
Fingers curling, pulling tight, Jean-Paul releases a short breath. "You know what I want. Jesus Christ, I don't care that we argued. Yes. I'm avoiding you. I find you hard to deal with right now. But it isn't because I'm mad at you, and it isn't because we argued."
Madrox stands up and pulls at the front of his shirt before looking back up. "All right. I just -" He flicks his hand out and lets it fall and steps forward. "You keep stepping back. I get why, but you keep stepping back."
Jean-Paul does not step back. He steps forward, meeting Madrox and then pushing him back. A light flush darkens his skin, speaking of one kind of intensity or another. The light of his eyes carries an undeniably cranky edge. "No. No, Jamie. I don't. I keep waiting. And I'm done, I'm tired of it."
Madrox meets the push with a stubborn plant of his feet, and braces his hands against Jean-Paul. (He still scoots a bit back, but it's a moderated withdrawal.) "So stop waiting."
"I /did/. I'm /done/." Biting the words with a ragged, hurt frustration Jean-Paul looks at Madrox with a tightening jaw. "Your turn. You say I keep stepping back, but you don't step up."
Madrox looks at Jean-Paul, with a sustained silence. Then he says, low-voiced, "My turn," and pushes in. It's more, say, swift, abrupt heat than any slow swelling forward for a nicer sort of kiss, more a hastened close of distance.
Moment stolen in haste, Jean-Paul curls his fingers into the fabric of Madrox's shirt with an urgent, greedy grasp. Unrestained, he kisses with heat and determination, like he is setting a demonstration -- or a challenge. But it is not a moment that lingers. He breaks the kiss, but he doesn't step back. The touch of hurt does not fade. "And tomorrow," he says, quiet and rough. "And the day after, and the day after: will you still be there, or will you draw back again?"
Madrox meets heat with heat, with perhaps a leavening of desperation that lends his side, also, that touch of greed before the moment ends. He exhales hard and his shoulders rise twitched, and lower, and he looks to Jean-Paul's hurt with fervid regret. "Yes," he says, and it still sounds like an exhale. "Yes, I'll stay. I'll stay, Jean-Paul."
Studying the shift of Madrox's expression, Jean-Paul's features settle into something too mixed to be easily defined. He speaks, quietly, without finishing a question: "Why do I--?" Lightly, he frames Madrox's face with the slide of his fingers. He kisses him again, slow, gentle, and lingering. "Okay," he says. Then he adds, "But I really should--." He tips his head. He probably has more productive things to do.
"I don't know," Madrox says to say, rued and quiet, and moves into the kiss the quieter for it. And after it is over. "I guess we do have an actual job to be doing out here. See you later." And he pulls away. ALSO not a metaphor. Recognizing productivity.
Not as good out of context.