Hot -damn-.
Yeah, the one week thing?
So didn't happen.
Lost John. He didn't come back after the weekend, said the Professor. I checked up on him with Cerebro. He's on the Brotherhood's island. No idea how to break it to Alyssa and everyone else, or when. No idea how to stop it from happening again, no idea how to teach teenagers patience. Frustration ensues, with, hello my old friend, anger. Went and sparred with Logan to blow off some steam. Felt better. There was a kiss.
Is there a better word than 'kiss'? 'Apocalypse' seems a bit much.
Off to soak out my muscles and count how many bruises I got this time. Damn, this makes life complicated.
Somehow, I don't care. Go away, world, just for a little bit.
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, July 20, 2005, 6:32 PM
----------------------------------------------
<< XS >> Gymnasium - LvB3
Far more tame than the vexing challenges of the Danger Room, the school's Gymnasium is no less enormous. Although requiring permission to be accessed by students by themselves, classes are occasionally conducted down here under staff supervision. Some of the equipment is a bit unorthodox, but other than that it's a standard-issue gym, the floors mapped out with the designs for a basketball court (to suit the four hoops that flank every wall), although the walls are covered in hard rubber tiling. Small alterations to cater to the needs of occasionally out-of-control mutant powers.
[Exits : [S]torage, and [H]allway ]
[Players : Logan ]
Knowing perfectly well where Scott is in the mansion, Jean has studiously avoided him as a result. There's been a conference with the Professor that resulted in the two telepaths heading down to the Cerebro chamber, and now Jean's entering the gymnasium, after a brief stop to borrow a spare pair of training sweats from the team locker room. It seems that the Cerebro excursion didn't turn up anything good, because there's a psychic thunderhead floating metaphysically over the lean redhead as she steps in and lets the gym door slide shut behind her.
Logan has been standing on a set of mats arranged for maximum sparring area. In the mean time, he is abusing a heavy bag. It appears he was good enough to wrap his hands, and it appears he has been here for a while already, having dropped of a sweaty looking sleeveless t-shirt and leaving him bare chested above gym shorts. As Jean comes in, he glances around, then slugs the bag again. "Y'know what we need in this mansion? A hockey rink."
"Talk to Bobby," Jean suggests, walking straight over to a lighter bag designed for enterprising kickboxers. She dips into a flexing stretch once, and then promptly snap-kicks it a good one, glaring at the bag as though it's the source of all evil in the world. "He once pulled a Real Genius on the upstairs hallway," is finished conversationally, as though nothing out of the ordinary just happened.
Logan glances around at Jean at the strength of the impact. "Heh. Yeah, I guess he could oblige," he says. "Though cleanup afterwards wouldn't be so nice as ...whassis name, Ick's dry ice." He thumps it a few more times. "Could maybe use the pond. How you doin', Red?"
"The koi might disapprove. But we can always get a simple ice sheet put in. ...I'll suggest it to Storm, now that she's deputy headmistress." The latter sentence is a bit slow in coming, as Jean's forced to remind herself that she is not in charge at the moment. She smiles, thin and wry, as a result, and then eyes the light bag again, bobbing on her feet. "Spent an evening with my father, good. Gave Sebastian Shaw a medical exam. Ambivalent. Discovered that John Allerdyce probably won't be back because he's on the Brotherhood's island base and happy about it..." *WHACK* goes the bag, and Jean spins down and out of the kick dealt it.
Logan gives a rather aggressive punch at the mention of Shaw and then stops with a fist raised at the mention of John's new status. "John? John fucking Allerdyce is licking Magneto's hairy old ass?" Surely an unnecessary and inaccurate visual image, but Logan is prone to expressing himself in shockingly vivid ways when upset. "Son of a bitch."
"It's not actually hairy," Jean feels called upon to point out, one of those random unnecessary statements that slip out when a mind is occupied elsewhere. "But yeah," she admits, peeling out of her hoodie and sneakers and stepping onto the matting barefoot and in a black sports bra besides the loose drawstring sweat pants. "That about sums it up. Fuck." she adds, consideringly, for good measure. "He's always just been so -impatient-, and it's gone and suckered him in good and proper." She settles into combat stance with barely more than a cursory warmup. She'll be paying for it at the end of this, but right now the calm steadiness needed to run through the warmups she normally goes through eludes her.
Ass kicking is much more likely to serve as an emotional outlet than warming up. Logan walks onto the mat opposite Jean, looking halfway between astonished and murderous. "Well, he'll be in for a rude awakening when we meet him again. Come kick my ass, we'll feel better."
"I like the way you think," Jean replies, with a grin that's more teeth than smile. She takes a brief moment to center herself, and then launches into a series of fast-paced kicks and battering arm strikes with little thought for defending herself. The mats are soft, bruises will heal within days, and she's oh-so-very-tired of staying on the defensive right now.
Logan is caught slightly off balance by the ferocity of Jean's attack. Parry, parry, withdraw, dodge, and lift the eyebrows. "Wow. John's gonna be in a lotta trouble when we see him," he says, picking up and healing a couple of bruises in an instant. Then he parries one strike and ripostes for the first time.
"That and whoever was the one to turn him." Jean promises somewhat darkly, ducking her torso back and then ducking forawrd to slash a bladed hand at Logan's elbow in the hopes of disrupting the counterstrike. Off-balance due to the ill-planning of the moves, she goes down on a knee and rolls out and up into a fresh stance, eyes alight. (Although, mercifully, in the conventional turn of the phrase only.) "I am so fucking tired of these kids wanting so desperately to be heroes that they'll run off after the first banner that gets waved at them and then have that utter -innocence- turned against them."
Logan's counterstrike is indeed disrupted to a large extent. Jean down and rolling means Logan following quickly, feinting with one leg and turning it into a hop as he strikes with the other at the good doctor's midriff. "Stupid ass kids. Should kick some sense into them."
"There's got to be-- ooof." Jean takes the kick to the midriff, although she backs away just enough that she's left bruised as she goes down into a breakfall, rather than winded. Pushing back up onto her feet and weaving as she watches Logan, she finishes her thought that "There's got to be some way to counter the charisma coming off organizations like the Brotherhood. If trying to scare some sense into them doesn't work, maybe we need to get these kids feeling less isolated, more like they've got a stake in society." She pauses, going incredibly still and poised, before pushing herself forward on a wave of telekinetic force, popping an uppercut shot to Logan's chin. The telekinesis is to help avoid things like broken knuckles. "Montreal trip?"
"Charisma," Logan says contemptuously. Then there's an uppercut of doom coming toward his chin. He jerks his head back, rotating his body on a pivot point around his hips. This sends his legs forward, intertwining them with Jean's so he twists to try and bring her down. "It ain't charisma, it's Hollywood. Montreal! Sounds like fun."
Jean is forced to obey the laws of physics, telekinesis aside, and duly goes down, quicly linking her elbows with Logan's to bring him down with her. Sure, she could use her powers and stay on her feet, but such moves are for the danger room, not this sparring match, where Jean wants nothing more than release of tension and the satisfying smack of flesh hitting flesh. "-Bloody- Hollywood," she mutters, planting her palms on the mat once she's down in order to push back up onto her feet. Will not be distracted by proximity of shirtless, sweaty Logan. Will behave. Will remember that one is angry and frustrated.
Logan drops with Jean easily enough and grins at her fleetingly before pushing himself upright as well, a distance away. "Ha. Yeah. Need kids to see that this place is even flashier than any shit they can offer." With a small, wet sound, Logan's claws emerge. "For instance," he says, grinning, then leaping into the air and coming down at Jean with his claws. Not that there is the remotest chance he would let himself connect, even if she didn't school him.
That feral grin appears again, and this time Jean's eyes spark a sudden whirling orange, stark against blackly dilated pupils. It's safe to say that Logan's schooled hardcore, in teen parlance, as he first bounces off of an invisible dome surrounding Jean, and is then picked up and flung across the gymnasium before he can hit the floor. She's considerate enough to make sure he's not flung -too- high. Exhileration follows fast, with realization and the laughed comment of "You did that on purpose," hard on its heels. She tosses her head to loosen damp hair from the nape of her neck, and then stands, hand on hip and head cocked, waiting for the next charge. "Nice." she approves.
Logan sheaths as he flies through the air like a big, heavy, hairy rag doll full of adamantium. He rolls as he lands and pops back up to his feet, though he staggers a bit as he attempts to regain his equilibrium. Then he grins. "You're so hot when you unsheath," he says. Before he can let the comment linger into discomfort, he's charging again, this time sheathed. Jean could, of course, pick him up and toss him around again, but that's no fun. He runs, jigs left, then jogs back to the right and adopts Jean's earlier tactic of a flurry of blows, mostly from his fists.
That simple, grinning comment lands with a force that all the previous blows have lacked, hitting Jean's hindbrain and unleashing a low down and deep empathic wave in return that's best kept away from the eyes and minds of children. Suffice it to say that Logan's ego should be taking no damage from it. It's but a breathless moment, though, before mental shields snap back up into place along with physical ones, Jean throwing her arms up to channel and redirect the first few of the blows. By the middle she's slipping, and by the end of the run she's just gone back to her powers, forearms up like a boxer's to protect her face as she *reaches* with a corner of her mind and whips the top layer of matting out from under Logan's feet.
If Logan had not already been charging at Jean, he might have faltered under the wash of Jean's emotions. He enjoys his flurry while it lasts, very little concerned about hitting her hard enough to really hurt her. Then his footing is suddenly jerking out from under him and he staggers away from Jean, wheeling his arms to try and keep his balance. Lucky for him that Jean had her arms up in a purely defensive posture, but even so, he is several paces back before there is any chance of him righting himself.
Jean sees her advantage and presses it, gliding over the gap in the matting to step, step, plant her left foot, and then swing the right foot hard for his stomach while he's off balance, muscles starting to complain about this exercise from what was nearly a cold start, but that normally carefully-restrained part of her mind that delights in such things as sparring matches singing an intoxicating song to her.
Well, Logan is not going to be getting out of the way, so Jean's foot connects solidly. Even as he starts to go backwards, he decides that not letting the contact going unpunished is more important than staying upright. So he falls backward...after he grabs hold of Jean's ankle, intent on dragging her down with him. For perhaps more than one reason, breathless though he suddenly is.
With that pull and a little gravity, Jean's other leg scoots out from under her and her head hits the matting with a resounding, if muffled, thump. She stares up at the ceiling for a moment, catching her breath and letting the stars clear, before methodically rolling over and creeping up to measure her length beside Logan's, one hand running through his hair as she hovers over him. Somewhere in her mind, the weak rationalization that she's checking for any swelling or signs of concussion is feebly offered up.
Logan doesn't get up too quickly either. The kick he took in the gut really did knock the wind out of him rather thoroughly, so he spends the time Jean spends moving up next to him resuming normal operations in his lungs. Then Jean is next to him, and as he looks over, her hand goes into his hair. No swelling, no concussion. Just a little electric shiver shooting up his spine. His hand comes up into her hair, and there is no feeble rationalization. Just a look into Jean's eyes...and then a pressure, drawing her towards him for a kiss.
That last little shred of rationalization? It's packed up and headed off with the rest of rational thought altogether. They're planning a nice little vacation off in the land of elsewhere as body memory and sheer physical desire fill in for them instead. Jean comes to the kiss hungry and intense, little trembles running through her muscles that have nothing to do with fatigue, and everything to do with a heady blend of love, lust and homecoming, and the sneaky piquancy of possible discovery. There is no artifice in the embrace, merely instinct, her hand still curled in his hair.
Logan holds Jean tight and close. It is good that Jean's hunger matches Logan's, balancing them in intensity, instinct, lust, love, relief and satisfaction. For a moment, an image and a desire flash through Logan's mind of throwing all caution to the wind and taking full advantage of their solitude in the gym. After a moment, the cautionary image of Jubilee flashes through his brain and discretion reasserts itself. He eases back from the kiss, opening his eyes to look into Jean's face. "Mmmm." A smile slowly grows on his face.
Jean wouldn't put it past Jubilee to have found a way to teleport home -just- to interrupt. While Logan's desires are mirrored in Jean's own thoughts, albeit with refinements of showers and steam, her own sense of discretion and forbearance also comes creeping back at the image, and she steps back from the edge of that very high sensual peak as a result. Exhaling through her nose and sliding down a bit, she rests her chin on his chest and eyes him with a lazily grave expressio that's strangely content for the moment. "Mmmmhmm." she agrees, followed by a sheepish "So much for a week, huh?"
Logan chuckles, a deep rumble coming almost directly from his chest up through her chin. He props one arm up behind his head so he can look Jean in the face. "Yeah," he agrees dryly. "Guess we're gonna need a new plan. I think it's gonna involve me visiting you frequently."
"Yeah." Jean agrees, although this switch away from sheer instinct and into the realm of logistics and planning causes a slight detached quality to slide into her expression, the look of an academic with a particularly challenging problem to work out. "And that's... going to be complicated as hell, what with all the undercurrents of the mission, and Scott, and God knows what else. But easy isn't for X-Men, is it?" She leans in again for another kiss, this one more restrained, more Jean than Phoenix, and then draws away again, slowly easing herself to her feet with a series of winces.
Logan returns the kiss and then sits up. Residual pain really just isn't as large of a problem for the Wolverine as, well, virtually anyone else. "No, don't think it ever was," he agrees. "But we'll figure it out. You feelin' okay?" He pushes up to his feet to face Jean and retrieve his shirt.
"Oh, I'm comfy," Jean assures, smile a touch more blitzed-looking than she really feels an almost thirty year old career medical professional and superheroine's should be. "I'm just going to go shower, then drive back to the city, then take advantage of the fact that my bathtub has jets in it. Since I think asking you for a massage really -should- wait the week, for the sake of my willpower." she quips, waving a hand to collect a towel and her borrowed hoodie.
Logan laughs at that. "Your willpower, hell," he replies as he pulls the t-shirt back on with an effort. "You enjoy the jets, I'll just enjoy the water." Or his mental image of it, and Jean. "I'll see you soon." Despite the casual tone of his voice, there is an underlying sense that he is not inclined to wait long to call on Jean again.
So didn't happen.
Lost John. He didn't come back after the weekend, said the Professor. I checked up on him with Cerebro. He's on the Brotherhood's island. No idea how to break it to Alyssa and everyone else, or when. No idea how to stop it from happening again, no idea how to teach teenagers patience. Frustration ensues, with, hello my old friend, anger. Went and sparred with Logan to blow off some steam. Felt better. There was a kiss.
Is there a better word than 'kiss'? 'Apocalypse' seems a bit much.
Off to soak out my muscles and count how many bruises I got this time. Damn, this makes life complicated.
Somehow, I don't care. Go away, world, just for a little bit.
X-Men MUCK - Wednesday, July 20, 2005, 6:32 PM
----------------------------------------------
<< XS >> Gymnasium - LvB3
Far more tame than the vexing challenges of the Danger Room, the school's Gymnasium is no less enormous. Although requiring permission to be accessed by students by themselves, classes are occasionally conducted down here under staff supervision. Some of the equipment is a bit unorthodox, but other than that it's a standard-issue gym, the floors mapped out with the designs for a basketball court (to suit the four hoops that flank every wall), although the walls are covered in hard rubber tiling. Small alterations to cater to the needs of occasionally out-of-control mutant powers.
[Exits : [S]torage, and [H]allway ]
[Players : Logan ]
Knowing perfectly well where Scott is in the mansion, Jean has studiously avoided him as a result. There's been a conference with the Professor that resulted in the two telepaths heading down to the Cerebro chamber, and now Jean's entering the gymnasium, after a brief stop to borrow a spare pair of training sweats from the team locker room. It seems that the Cerebro excursion didn't turn up anything good, because there's a psychic thunderhead floating metaphysically over the lean redhead as she steps in and lets the gym door slide shut behind her.
Logan has been standing on a set of mats arranged for maximum sparring area. In the mean time, he is abusing a heavy bag. It appears he was good enough to wrap his hands, and it appears he has been here for a while already, having dropped of a sweaty looking sleeveless t-shirt and leaving him bare chested above gym shorts. As Jean comes in, he glances around, then slugs the bag again. "Y'know what we need in this mansion? A hockey rink."
"Talk to Bobby," Jean suggests, walking straight over to a lighter bag designed for enterprising kickboxers. She dips into a flexing stretch once, and then promptly snap-kicks it a good one, glaring at the bag as though it's the source of all evil in the world. "He once pulled a Real Genius on the upstairs hallway," is finished conversationally, as though nothing out of the ordinary just happened.
Logan glances around at Jean at the strength of the impact. "Heh. Yeah, I guess he could oblige," he says. "Though cleanup afterwards wouldn't be so nice as ...whassis name, Ick's dry ice." He thumps it a few more times. "Could maybe use the pond. How you doin', Red?"
"The koi might disapprove. But we can always get a simple ice sheet put in. ...I'll suggest it to Storm, now that she's deputy headmistress." The latter sentence is a bit slow in coming, as Jean's forced to remind herself that she is not in charge at the moment. She smiles, thin and wry, as a result, and then eyes the light bag again, bobbing on her feet. "Spent an evening with my father, good. Gave Sebastian Shaw a medical exam. Ambivalent. Discovered that John Allerdyce probably won't be back because he's on the Brotherhood's island base and happy about it..." *WHACK* goes the bag, and Jean spins down and out of the kick dealt it.
Logan gives a rather aggressive punch at the mention of Shaw and then stops with a fist raised at the mention of John's new status. "John? John fucking Allerdyce is licking Magneto's hairy old ass?" Surely an unnecessary and inaccurate visual image, but Logan is prone to expressing himself in shockingly vivid ways when upset. "Son of a bitch."
"It's not actually hairy," Jean feels called upon to point out, one of those random unnecessary statements that slip out when a mind is occupied elsewhere. "But yeah," she admits, peeling out of her hoodie and sneakers and stepping onto the matting barefoot and in a black sports bra besides the loose drawstring sweat pants. "That about sums it up. Fuck." she adds, consideringly, for good measure. "He's always just been so -impatient-, and it's gone and suckered him in good and proper." She settles into combat stance with barely more than a cursory warmup. She'll be paying for it at the end of this, but right now the calm steadiness needed to run through the warmups she normally goes through eludes her.
Ass kicking is much more likely to serve as an emotional outlet than warming up. Logan walks onto the mat opposite Jean, looking halfway between astonished and murderous. "Well, he'll be in for a rude awakening when we meet him again. Come kick my ass, we'll feel better."
"I like the way you think," Jean replies, with a grin that's more teeth than smile. She takes a brief moment to center herself, and then launches into a series of fast-paced kicks and battering arm strikes with little thought for defending herself. The mats are soft, bruises will heal within days, and she's oh-so-very-tired of staying on the defensive right now.
Logan is caught slightly off balance by the ferocity of Jean's attack. Parry, parry, withdraw, dodge, and lift the eyebrows. "Wow. John's gonna be in a lotta trouble when we see him," he says, picking up and healing a couple of bruises in an instant. Then he parries one strike and ripostes for the first time.
"That and whoever was the one to turn him." Jean promises somewhat darkly, ducking her torso back and then ducking forawrd to slash a bladed hand at Logan's elbow in the hopes of disrupting the counterstrike. Off-balance due to the ill-planning of the moves, she goes down on a knee and rolls out and up into a fresh stance, eyes alight. (Although, mercifully, in the conventional turn of the phrase only.) "I am so fucking tired of these kids wanting so desperately to be heroes that they'll run off after the first banner that gets waved at them and then have that utter -innocence- turned against them."
Logan's counterstrike is indeed disrupted to a large extent. Jean down and rolling means Logan following quickly, feinting with one leg and turning it into a hop as he strikes with the other at the good doctor's midriff. "Stupid ass kids. Should kick some sense into them."
"There's got to be-- ooof." Jean takes the kick to the midriff, although she backs away just enough that she's left bruised as she goes down into a breakfall, rather than winded. Pushing back up onto her feet and weaving as she watches Logan, she finishes her thought that "There's got to be some way to counter the charisma coming off organizations like the Brotherhood. If trying to scare some sense into them doesn't work, maybe we need to get these kids feeling less isolated, more like they've got a stake in society." She pauses, going incredibly still and poised, before pushing herself forward on a wave of telekinetic force, popping an uppercut shot to Logan's chin. The telekinesis is to help avoid things like broken knuckles. "Montreal trip?"
"Charisma," Logan says contemptuously. Then there's an uppercut of doom coming toward his chin. He jerks his head back, rotating his body on a pivot point around his hips. This sends his legs forward, intertwining them with Jean's so he twists to try and bring her down. "It ain't charisma, it's Hollywood. Montreal! Sounds like fun."
Jean is forced to obey the laws of physics, telekinesis aside, and duly goes down, quicly linking her elbows with Logan's to bring him down with her. Sure, she could use her powers and stay on her feet, but such moves are for the danger room, not this sparring match, where Jean wants nothing more than release of tension and the satisfying smack of flesh hitting flesh. "-Bloody- Hollywood," she mutters, planting her palms on the mat once she's down in order to push back up onto her feet. Will not be distracted by proximity of shirtless, sweaty Logan. Will behave. Will remember that one is angry and frustrated.
Logan drops with Jean easily enough and grins at her fleetingly before pushing himself upright as well, a distance away. "Ha. Yeah. Need kids to see that this place is even flashier than any shit they can offer." With a small, wet sound, Logan's claws emerge. "For instance," he says, grinning, then leaping into the air and coming down at Jean with his claws. Not that there is the remotest chance he would let himself connect, even if she didn't school him.
That feral grin appears again, and this time Jean's eyes spark a sudden whirling orange, stark against blackly dilated pupils. It's safe to say that Logan's schooled hardcore, in teen parlance, as he first bounces off of an invisible dome surrounding Jean, and is then picked up and flung across the gymnasium before he can hit the floor. She's considerate enough to make sure he's not flung -too- high. Exhileration follows fast, with realization and the laughed comment of "You did that on purpose," hard on its heels. She tosses her head to loosen damp hair from the nape of her neck, and then stands, hand on hip and head cocked, waiting for the next charge. "Nice." she approves.
Logan sheaths as he flies through the air like a big, heavy, hairy rag doll full of adamantium. He rolls as he lands and pops back up to his feet, though he staggers a bit as he attempts to regain his equilibrium. Then he grins. "You're so hot when you unsheath," he says. Before he can let the comment linger into discomfort, he's charging again, this time sheathed. Jean could, of course, pick him up and toss him around again, but that's no fun. He runs, jigs left, then jogs back to the right and adopts Jean's earlier tactic of a flurry of blows, mostly from his fists.
That simple, grinning comment lands with a force that all the previous blows have lacked, hitting Jean's hindbrain and unleashing a low down and deep empathic wave in return that's best kept away from the eyes and minds of children. Suffice it to say that Logan's ego should be taking no damage from it. It's but a breathless moment, though, before mental shields snap back up into place along with physical ones, Jean throwing her arms up to channel and redirect the first few of the blows. By the middle she's slipping, and by the end of the run she's just gone back to her powers, forearms up like a boxer's to protect her face as she *reaches* with a corner of her mind and whips the top layer of matting out from under Logan's feet.
If Logan had not already been charging at Jean, he might have faltered under the wash of Jean's emotions. He enjoys his flurry while it lasts, very little concerned about hitting her hard enough to really hurt her. Then his footing is suddenly jerking out from under him and he staggers away from Jean, wheeling his arms to try and keep his balance. Lucky for him that Jean had her arms up in a purely defensive posture, but even so, he is several paces back before there is any chance of him righting himself.
Jean sees her advantage and presses it, gliding over the gap in the matting to step, step, plant her left foot, and then swing the right foot hard for his stomach while he's off balance, muscles starting to complain about this exercise from what was nearly a cold start, but that normally carefully-restrained part of her mind that delights in such things as sparring matches singing an intoxicating song to her.
Well, Logan is not going to be getting out of the way, so Jean's foot connects solidly. Even as he starts to go backwards, he decides that not letting the contact going unpunished is more important than staying upright. So he falls backward...after he grabs hold of Jean's ankle, intent on dragging her down with him. For perhaps more than one reason, breathless though he suddenly is.
With that pull and a little gravity, Jean's other leg scoots out from under her and her head hits the matting with a resounding, if muffled, thump. She stares up at the ceiling for a moment, catching her breath and letting the stars clear, before methodically rolling over and creeping up to measure her length beside Logan's, one hand running through his hair as she hovers over him. Somewhere in her mind, the weak rationalization that she's checking for any swelling or signs of concussion is feebly offered up.
Logan doesn't get up too quickly either. The kick he took in the gut really did knock the wind out of him rather thoroughly, so he spends the time Jean spends moving up next to him resuming normal operations in his lungs. Then Jean is next to him, and as he looks over, her hand goes into his hair. No swelling, no concussion. Just a little electric shiver shooting up his spine. His hand comes up into her hair, and there is no feeble rationalization. Just a look into Jean's eyes...and then a pressure, drawing her towards him for a kiss.
That last little shred of rationalization? It's packed up and headed off with the rest of rational thought altogether. They're planning a nice little vacation off in the land of elsewhere as body memory and sheer physical desire fill in for them instead. Jean comes to the kiss hungry and intense, little trembles running through her muscles that have nothing to do with fatigue, and everything to do with a heady blend of love, lust and homecoming, and the sneaky piquancy of possible discovery. There is no artifice in the embrace, merely instinct, her hand still curled in his hair.
Logan holds Jean tight and close. It is good that Jean's hunger matches Logan's, balancing them in intensity, instinct, lust, love, relief and satisfaction. For a moment, an image and a desire flash through Logan's mind of throwing all caution to the wind and taking full advantage of their solitude in the gym. After a moment, the cautionary image of Jubilee flashes through his brain and discretion reasserts itself. He eases back from the kiss, opening his eyes to look into Jean's face. "Mmmm." A smile slowly grows on his face.
Jean wouldn't put it past Jubilee to have found a way to teleport home -just- to interrupt. While Logan's desires are mirrored in Jean's own thoughts, albeit with refinements of showers and steam, her own sense of discretion and forbearance also comes creeping back at the image, and she steps back from the edge of that very high sensual peak as a result. Exhaling through her nose and sliding down a bit, she rests her chin on his chest and eyes him with a lazily grave expressio that's strangely content for the moment. "Mmmmhmm." she agrees, followed by a sheepish "So much for a week, huh?"
Logan chuckles, a deep rumble coming almost directly from his chest up through her chin. He props one arm up behind his head so he can look Jean in the face. "Yeah," he agrees dryly. "Guess we're gonna need a new plan. I think it's gonna involve me visiting you frequently."
"Yeah." Jean agrees, although this switch away from sheer instinct and into the realm of logistics and planning causes a slight detached quality to slide into her expression, the look of an academic with a particularly challenging problem to work out. "And that's... going to be complicated as hell, what with all the undercurrents of the mission, and Scott, and God knows what else. But easy isn't for X-Men, is it?" She leans in again for another kiss, this one more restrained, more Jean than Phoenix, and then draws away again, slowly easing herself to her feet with a series of winces.
Logan returns the kiss and then sits up. Residual pain really just isn't as large of a problem for the Wolverine as, well, virtually anyone else. "No, don't think it ever was," he agrees. "But we'll figure it out. You feelin' okay?" He pushes up to his feet to face Jean and retrieve his shirt.
"Oh, I'm comfy," Jean assures, smile a touch more blitzed-looking than she really feels an almost thirty year old career medical professional and superheroine's should be. "I'm just going to go shower, then drive back to the city, then take advantage of the fact that my bathtub has jets in it. Since I think asking you for a massage really -should- wait the week, for the sake of my willpower." she quips, waving a hand to collect a towel and her borrowed hoodie.
Logan laughs at that. "Your willpower, hell," he replies as he pulls the t-shirt back on with an effort. "You enjoy the jets, I'll just enjoy the water." Or his mental image of it, and Jean. "I'll see you soon." Despite the casual tone of his voice, there is an underlying sense that he is not inclined to wait long to call on Jean again.