WHAT IF - Jean
12/3/2008
Logfile from Emma.
The weather forecast called for snow for the next 48 hours. They neglected to mention the fact that it would be three feet of it and apparently falling sideways. Planes have made it in to Sardy Field, bringing with them fresh travellers destined for ski slopes and resorts, but the same planes, meant to take away those who have survived the party lifestyle, are now stuck in hangars and on tarmac, being steadily buried despite their crews' best efforts. The highway is closed through the passes. The hotel situation is, to say the least, approaching critical.
Thus it is that one Dr. Jean Grey, in town to attend a conference (Hosted by Big Pharma and laden with ski-slope perks and cuchy accomodations you'd expect.) is towing her wheeled travel bag, laden high with shed parka and other outerwear, along the hallway of a Very Nice Hotel that has been trying desperately to meet the promises of prior reservations, while still dealing with all its ought-to-be-checked-out strandlings. 'Honeymoon Suite' proclaims a discreet little brass plaque beside the door. Jean awards it the jaded, weary look of a delayed traveller.
She's going to award it more than just a look once she enters. 'Honeymoon Suite' also means 'Best Room in the House,' and the current occupant wouldn't have any other room. Unfortunately, the critical bed situation means that all rooms with more than one bed are being doubled up, with profound apologies of course. And since the current occupant of the room is female, and Jean is female, they're being shacked up together. HOW FUN. The room is strewn with clothing, a television playing non-stop weather coverage is playing, and the jacuzzi tub is bubbling. A bottle of champagne, freshly opened, sweats on a table. One glass sits by it. The other is in the tub occupant's hand.
Should Emma be snooping, Jean's mind remains the closed book of a shielded telepath, but with little sticky-notes of weariness and irritation poking out from the pages as she attempts a task that no amount of mutant might can assist her with: getting the damned key card to be read by the lock. Fourth try, after a hasty buffing with the silken edge of a wine red blouse, is apparently the charm. Click, goes the door. Trundle, goes Jean's bag. "Ah," says Dr. Grey, taking in the clothesplosion and letting the pained expression she'd like to wear blossom only on the surface of her mind. "Hello?"
"Come in," drifts from around the corner where the tub is tucked into a romantic little enclave. "The management has already called and /explained/." Disdain coats Emma's words thickly, but it doesn't necessarily appear to be directed at the new arrival so much so as the situation. "There is a trundle bed in the co--" There is a wet sounding plunk and a muffled curse, along with the sounds of someone moving swiftly in a tub of bubbling water. It is accompanied by the familiar pressure of a telepath encountering Jean's shields, like ice crackling.
Fine blouse crumpled at the back from too long in an airplane seat, hair up in a butterfly clip, and her dark slacks the practical no-wrinkle fabric of a traveller, Jean and her bag approach the middle of the room and stop, the door swinging closed behind them with a weighty thump. Banked embers melt at the inquisitive ice, and she flicks a glance over towards the tub as a dissatisfied snort puffs from her. "Wonderful," is stated with flat irony. "My optimism in reflecting that at least nothing worse than six hours on the tarmac has been repaid in full." The bag is wheeled over towards the port-a-cot, and in pointed counterpoint to the clothing flung around, Jean busies herself with hanging her coat neatly, leaving high heels beside it, and then padding in stocking-feet for the champagne.
(OOC) Jean says, "Nothing worse *will happen* Missed that."
Which is in line of sight of the tub. byt the time Jean pads into view, Emma is, at least, out of the tub and wrapped in an indulgently large towel (rather smaller than her usual ones, but then, those are custom made). Her hair dangles in wet-tipped curls from a a messy updo, and bubbles slide off rounded curves like shoulders and arms and... other things. A string of replies riotsin her mind, but she finally settles on simply, "How the /hell/ did you end up /here/?"
"Well, in 1903, the Wright Brothers demonstrated the possibility of powered flight by something called an 'aeroplane'," Jean drawls, helping herself to a seat by the bubbly, and unfastening the top two buttons of the wine red blouse. "Things developed from there." The butterfly clip follows the buttons, removed with a toss of her head to shake loose the shoulder length fall of her hair.
"Have you added history to your teaching repetiore?" Emma asks snidely, tucking her towel a little tighter just over her breasts as she turns to move into the bathroom proper, which is brightly lit and warmed from heated tiles and towel warmers.
"Tsk, tsk, Emma," Jean clucks, as the butterfly clip is set down with a fond little pat, and one hand is run through her hair. "Snide comments about having an education are -so- blue collar." A nestled little ember of mischief burns bright beneath mental bankings, shedding a lovely warm glow at irritation shared being irritation lessened. "No need to give up your hot tub on my account, though. I -was- about to join you."
Emma pauses in the doorway, and looks back over her shoulder, a mirroring mischief flaring to life in narrowed blue eyes. Surprise, then intrigue mixed not a little with challenge, sparkle across her mind like the snowflakes hitting the windowpane outside. She turns slowly, lips quirking into a small, smug smile, and shifts her weight into an aggressively inviting stance. "Oh? The water is still hot."
"You mean that 'Frost' is just a name after all?" Jean wonders, green eyes wide and absolutely, entirely, completely (not) innocent as she peers at Emma from over the rim of her champagne flute. Innocence shatters in the curve of her smile as she toasts the other woman, drinks, and then skins one big toe up along the other calf and down again, peeling off one stocking without putting down the glass.
Emma's hand drifts up to the tuck of the towel and lets it hang there as she takes a step out of the doorway and back toward Jean. The water droplets of earlier have evaporated, but her skin still glows porcelain and pink. Blue eyes fix on green and hold them brazenly, while she extends her telepathy to slide around and along Jean's shields in a game of seduction chicken. "Why don't you find out for yourself?" she purrs.
The edges of Jean's mind are bemused and amused all at once, dark and rich cocoa swirled with just a hint of cayenne's spice against the chill of the encroaching cold front. "Perhaps I will," she answers, with a flickering veil of eyelashes briefly lowered, before the second stocking meets the floor. Tidy even in distraction, she then sweeps the pair beneath her chair and out of the way. "It seems unfair to just get my feet wet when I could dive in."
Emma stops about a foot away and reaches out to take the champagne bottle by the neck, her forefinger and thumb encircling it. Her own glass, retrieved out of the bathtub earlier, still sits on the tub's lip. No matter. She leans over, the towels tuck straining against the pressure and slipping just a little, and plucks Jean's glass up. "You never have wanted to be unfair, have you? Except perhaps to yourself. And me."
"You speak of unfair, and yet you deny me my champagne?" A little moue touches Jean's lips, and she rises, not to follow Emma to the hot tub, but to turn instead to unpacking her clothing with a meticulous air. Hangers are added to the closet, sweaters added to the drawers, and her voice floats back over to the hot tub with a low little laugh in it, echo of what sparkles across her thoughts. "On the other hand, you know what they say about denial."
Emma pours herself a splash and tosses it down her throat before setting bottle and glass back down, the former with a glassy 'thunk' and the latter with a 'tink'. She doesn't hang around to watch Jean unpack. Instead, she returns to the bathroom and fusses around in there, drowning possible conversation with a hairdryer and running water, though her wintermint mind percolates against Jean's cocoa and cayenne. "There's a robe in the closet there, if you need it," she says later when she exits, wrapped up in her own robe, a soft, velvet and silk affair that is definitely not hotel issue. Her hair is down now, floating like a silken cloud around her shoulders, warm and scented. "What is it they say?" she asks, folding her arms in front of her and leaning against a wall, watching the domestic routine in bemusement.
The hairdryer hides the soft sound of Jean slipping into the hot tub, the clothing brought having proved to be only that necessary for a long weekend ski trip, with a two hour bit of drug shilling dressed up like a conference tucked in. Her own robe is folded at the foot of the bed, and not the cot. "Heightens the eventual experience," she murmurs, the jacuzzi bubbles high enough to obscure anything beneath a notably bare set of shoulders. "The champagne?"
Well now. This just isn't right. You would think telepaths would be better at... uh. Synching things up? Emma looks from robe to bath with a lift of her brows and lips twisted into a bemused smile. "It's nearly gone. I'll have room service bring up another bottle. Any thing else while I'm at it?" She moves to the phone and lifts the receiver up.
Unless, as the glitter in Jean's eyes suggests, the scene has been set on purpose. "Do they have masseuses on the menu?" she wonders, burrowing in against a jet and letting her eyes close in what looks to be contentment if the sharp attention of her mind is removed from the equation. "Business class may be better than coach, but ten hours next to a very large cattle baron would leave anyone's spine in knots."
Emma's turn into the receiver hides the smile on her lips, and her words are indistinct, but the conversation doesn't last long. "No masseuse, but I do have an assistant who has training," she offers, ambling back to the tubs side and perching gingerly there. Her back is against the wall opposite Jean, and she lifts her foot up to the edge. Her robe parts and falls away to upper thigh. Emma dips her hand into the bubbles and brings up a handful. "Though maybe if you ask nicely, I might oblige."
Jean flickers an eyebrow at the wardrobe malfunction, smirks slightly, and then lifts her eyes to Emma's with a limpid expression that layers over a mind bubbling with a sudden curiosity. "Pretty please?"
Emma's toes wriggle on the porcelain in a sudden explosion of energy that reveals itself no where else physically. Mentally, however... the clash of like personalities and abilities coats every thought and impulse, both murderous and otherwise, associated with Jean with a fine layer of gritty, gray dust. Underneath the coating, a desire to dominate bends in a unfamiliar way. She slides the foot down into the water and straddles the tub wall. "Turn around," she orders huskily, leaning forward and gripping the wall with her hands to slide her forward to the middle.
Thoughts of dominance and submission are absent in Jean, her own turn to do as ordered driven by some oddly-twisted variant of the same curiosity that drives man to seek out lightning bolts, just to see what happens. The strange smirk lingers as she pushes off from her wall of the jacuzzi, a wake rising through the churning water, and settles herself with her back between Emma's knees. "I take it," she murmurs, "That you're not intending to strangle me."
Emma swings her other foot over the side and slips it down into the water boiling around her calves. Her robe drapes around her, pooling mostly on the ground outside the tub, though a corner dangles into the water. She slides a hand up under Jean's hair and grips her neck in a strong, pinching motion. "If I was, I could make you like it," she murmurs back, leaning forward and lowering her lips to near Jean's ear.
Gooseflesh rises and ripples across exposed flesh as Emma's breath caresses her cheek, and for a moment the water flattens oddly, swirls disrupted by a strayed pulse of power. A lift of her head, a baring of her throat, and Jean, too, whispers in a delicate ear. "I'm sure the struggle if you tried would be... stimulating." << But is it always power games, with you? >> comes a little whisper of mind against mind.
<< What other games are there? >> Emma replies easily, shifting forward so that the back of Jean's arms brush her thighs. Her fingers move in slow, firm circles that find and kneed away knots in her neck.
<< Sometimes there's no game at all. >> Jean's neck puts up a valient fight to keep its knots, but persistant hands and the warm and churning water are beginning to have their way, thin red background threads of pain beginning to unravel from her mental tapestry and swirl away on a warm desert wind. << Sometimes, >> her thoughts murmurs, as her own fingers seek and find Emma's calves, << There's simply enjoying the sensation. >> Shielded still, a window to her mind opens despite the barriers, letting slip a dust devil of suggestion and sense-memory not yet realized.
Emma presses her thumb against the base of Jean's skull and presses while her toes wiggle and slip through the water to dig under Jean's cheeks. << Why can't there be both? >> Emma asks, reaching after that dustdevil, only to have is dissipate between her fingers.
"Because power games don't interest me." Spoken aloud, shared mentally, and heated with dark flame on deeper levels even as her mind permits surface rapport, the words are paired with a flicker of burning copper in green eyes. Jean rises from the water and turns as she does so, heated skin slick and slippery beneath Emma's hands, as her own abandon the teasing stroke of a calf in favour of a an upwards fingertip-tilt of a chin and the spread-hand framing of a surgeon's artistic vision made flesh. Curiosity still lingers around her mind, but there is nothing tentative about the exploration in her kiss.
Emma's hands fly apart at the sudden motion, and surprise sparkles like electricity through her thoughts, jumping across the infinitesimally small chasm between their minds with a spark of static. She stiffens under the other woman's touch with outraged possessiveness. << You lie, >> Emma accuses a breath later, pulling her hands back in and directing one to tangle into red hair with an almost painful grip, the other to ghost a thumb from just under the swell of Jean's breast down the length of her torso. << It's the power that attracts you. >>
<< Do you care if I lie or not? >> comes the question from a mind free where a mouth is not. The red threads weave in and out at the tangling hand, paired with a low laugh against Emma's lips, before Jean breaks the kiss to trail teeth and tongue upwards to an earlobe, nipping at it gently as she steps them both backwards into the swirl of the water. "Equals, Emma. That's what interests me. And you don't get much more equal than the other side of the coin."
<< Not at all. >> Emma's laugh bubbles up impishly, like silver air bubbles underwater. She rises into the kiss, tipping her head back when Jean breaks away. Jean pulls and she pushes them backwards, past the middle, to the far wall, so that cool tile dripping condensation chills the length of Jean's bare back. Her hand slides up to cup a breast and roll Jean's nipple between her fingers. "Not even close, Grey." She leans against her, trapping her between wet silk and wet tile.
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Jean half-laughs back, the teasing light still in her eyes as she arches her back against the pulses of sensation fore and aft, somatic nerves blazing a corridor to her mind. Her own hands are busy, if less insistant, turning lazy circles up and along Emma's spine and flirting along the flare of her hips. "Although I'd prefer to use the bed for better purposes," is encouraged once more to Emma's ear.
"I don't think I'm going to /need/ to sleep tonight," Emma smirks, using her handhold in Jean's hair to pull her closer for a teasing brush of lips before releasing her and stepping away. She turns and climbs carefully out of the tub before stripping the half-soaked robe from her shoulders, revealing more of that artist vision made flesh heading around the corner and for the indulgently dressed bed.
"Tsk, tsk," Jean clucks again, eyes alight. "If that's how you talk to your men in moments like this, you must have been frustrated before the invention of Viagra, Emma dear." She allows Emma to pad ahead and out of sight, and waits a contrary moment before joining her as well, the rest of the scene moved out of range of this particular camera.
What if Jean and Emma got snowed in together? What if they made fanboys' dreams come true? R for fanboy wet dream material.