OOC: Logs
From Thursday night and backdated to Thursday night. The Black Queening and Logan's Reaction To It:
X-Men MUCK - Thursday, September 01, 2005, 8:01 PM
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McClintock Center - Gradient Genetech
Not the grandest or largest of the suites available, Gradient Genetech shares a similar quality of 'shiny and new' all the same. A small conference/reception area with a front desk, two loveseats and a coffee table is visible from the hallway, with three doors leading off from it. One is to a small office on the left, the other to a storage and supply room of equal size. The door at the back leads to the main laboratory space, which takes up a full half of the suite's footprint. While it's not as well-equipped as Dr. Grey's lab back 'home', it nonetheless features PCR machines, microscopes, a robotic pipetter, and all the other tools of a geneticist's trade, along with a small exam room for human patients, curtained off with glass walls and sliding doors. Another area behind other temporary walls is alive with the sounds of squeaking and tussling, courtesy of cages full of well-kept lab mice.
[Exits : [H]allway ]
Clackity clackity clack, the sounds of typing at a fevered pace Jean remembers from days of term papers and lab reports. Throw in mouse clicks and the occasional clinks of a can of Coke set on the surface of the desk, and we have the symphony of the computer jockey. Reading glasses sliding down her nose as she rubs at her eyes for the twelfth time in twenty minutes, Jean peers blearily at an Excel spreadsheet as if hoping the interpretation of the data will somehow do itself. Conclusions... hanging just out of reach, visible, tangible, like a juicy peach on a high tree branch. She sighs, and swears softly into the emptiness of the office. "Fucking Wide Awake."
Oh, fortunate day, that it is finally ending, under cover of well-advanced evening, and that it has delivered one comprehensively pissed-off Sebastian Shaw to the McClintock Center's doorstep. While his driver putters down to parking, he swipes a key card past the reader's gate to push inside, and push inside he does, a roiling, boiling bubble of black-hot energy only just contained in his dark suit and darker mind. The ride up the elevator mitigates somewhat -- trapped in a small, tight box, and the coldness it imposes around his edges -- but angry still, as he tugs at pale-rose shirt's collar buttons to let in more air. By the time he's out again, all but pouncing onto Gradient's floor, he is a more controlled tycoon and emotional typhoon. Well. Until he reaches the final barrier, just one more damn door, between him and his goal, that is.
Jean is not unaware of this particular cyclone of emotional discontent approaching, but, perhaps unwisely, she chooses to ignore it. Tuned into the work in front of her with a scientist and surgeon's narrow focus on the here-and-now, the black and storming Shaw is written off as irrelevant data until he chooses to make himself known. Click, click, clack, and a GIS program that makes the Excel file look like a kindergarten addition chart is brought up. Names are input from a file, along with locations, and with a click, click, double click, analysis begins. "C'mon, c'mon," Jean mutters to the program, waiting for the map of the eastern seaboard in front of her to light up with the program's results. As an afterthought, she reaches a vague twitch of her powers to turn the lights on in the little reception area. There are magazines. There are news clippings. There is a coffee maker. That should hold him, she decides, engaging in a little intellectual triage.
Yes, because that is /exactly/ what Shaw wants to do right now: sit quietly in a chair and leaf through a magazine. Maybe dab his finger on his tongue to provide the proper sticking friction every now and then for turning the next page. No. And /no,/ if the lights can go on and by themselves, but of /course/ not by themselves, and if she is inside, and if she -- if she-- He paces hard away from the lab's door, spins hard around, and stares hard at it. A sliding door, with a handle instead of a knob. Further cold anneals his mind's heat into resolve, and he returns to the portal to grasp the handle in both hands and /yank./
The door protests! The door protests mightily, in fact, sticking stubbornly until there's a squeal and a snap of overstressed metal, the little hooked catch keeping it locked being no longer hooked 'nor catching. Jean's reaction is immediate and instinctive, spinning in her chair and jumping to her feet, screen shielded with her body by reflex as she snaps out a "Jesus -Christ-, Sebastian, there's a thing called -knocking-, for the love of God." Mild blasphemy enthusiastically committed, she whips off her reading glasses and drops them in her lab coat pocket with a jerky adrenaline kick to her movements.
"Lovely to see you, too, Dr. Grey," Shaw replies on his step past the door, past the blasphemy, into her lair with a hard, bright smile to match his eyes' raven shine. "I thought you might want more data on my mutation for any future modelling you might find cause to do. --Oh." He makes a regretful face as he considers her stance. "Have I interrupted you? Is this a bad time?"
"Yes," Jean's smiling as she replies, but it's a pained and painful one, teeth gritted more than grinning. "I was in the middle of an entire raft of data analysis, I could see a few conclusions in my head, and now you've done a great impression of a bull in my mental china shop, thanks. Can you give me ten minutes to wrap up?" she asks, although the fact that she turns her back on Shaw, still shielding the screen, and begins hastily saving and closing windows, rather puts the lie to any thought that it's a request. The GIS software is still trying to analyze and solve, and refuses to be closed despite the incriminating names and logos starting to pop up on the map. One needn't be a telepath to interpret Jean's thoughts: Oh -shit-, hurry -up-.
Shaw stalks right after her, preceded by hot and eager thought like a wavefront. "Ten minutes?" he repeats. "And after I've come all this way, and have wreaked such havoc on your door and my biology alike -- no. No, I'm not going to wait. This is more important than whatever that prog--" Again the interruption, but this one isn't dramatically feigned. It's honest, and so's his mental reaction: curiosity lunging to the fore, shouldering through irritation and anger. "What /is/ that? What are you doing?"
And *blip*, up turns the one name Jean was hoping would take a while. Dynamo. She pales for a moment, and then decides with a lunatic edge and a grin gone suddenly bright-beaming to throw one last maverick card into the deck. Simple honesty. "That's a GIS program that's helping me conduct industrial espionage." she informs him, grin vanished and tone dead level. Behind her, her hands grip the back of her desk chair like a vise. "One of my targets is your company, although I don't think you know half of what I've figured out."
And crack, out flashes Shaw's hand in a flattened, calculated blow across her face. "Then why don't you shut your fucking mouth," he says levelly, "and tell me, you clever bitch."
Jean's head snaps backwards with the force of the blow. Turrning with it enough to remain on her feet without stumbling, the force is nonetheless enough to split her lip and raise an angry red mark across her face. Slowly, steadily, like a statue come to life, she turns her head back and regards Shaw with burning, smouldering, -considering- eyes. No cowed cringing from this one: instead, wildness and war, carefully subsubed by will. "All right," she accedes, spinning the chair around and motioning for Shaw to sit as she brings the rest of the files back up online. "Ever heard of a little project called Wide Awake?"
"No. Governmental?" Clipped is the question, and cold is Shaw, cold and hard and dark. He's /not/ sitting, but standing, and his hand has curled around the back of the offered chair. He leans on it to see the screen better. "Dynamo," he mutters. "Goddamn sons of--"
"Used to be," Jean agrees. "Now... I suspect the government knows not what its little project has grown up into. This is what Wide Awake is," she pulls up a .pdf file to illustrate, letting Shaw skim and process the project summary before she calls up more files, and indicates the GIS program's list of names. "Recognize a common thread amongst the people at the helms of these companies?" she wonders. "Michael Spaggiari, Angela Dubois, Edward Albert Smythe III, Kingsley Fisher, Allison Pellegrini... Emma Frost."
"And you."
The hand tightens spasmodically on the chair back, and tendons line long tension down Shaw's neck. << /Emma,/ >> his mind rumbles like approaching thunder, but all he says, eyes never leaving the screen and baritone never leaving its even calm, is, "This is nothing I am familiar with. Nothing I know about. What are they doing? What /is/ Wide Awake?"
"Wide Awake is a project dedicated to the creation of a prototype for a system of mutant detection and pursuit drones," Jean decants a precis like a grad student teaching their first freshman class. She quite ignores the hot and sticky trickle of blood from the split and welling lip, tongue flashing once or twice to clear it but nothing beyond that. "It was once a black ops project for the government, and now it seems some of your Hellfire Club cronies have taken it for their own. With you conveniently outside their circle." she concludes. "Probably to be a patsy if they needed to cut losses."
Anger and disbelief and power flex as one, sending the chair crashing into the wall at the end of Shaw's sideways jerk. Fists clamp to his side, and he breathes hard for a moment. "Yes," he says then, and still, so admirably, damnably level. "Yes, they would do that. /She/ would. God/dam/mit!" His control wavers, and his temper flares, and he narrows his eyes away from the screen and onto her. "And you're interested in this because...? Not for the financial or political well-being of your latest patient, I'm sure."
"Of course not," Jean replies, no trace of her flippant lighthearted approach of earlier months in sight. No, this is a time for frankness and for solemnity, and with her eyes sharp and glittery as a scalpel's edge, she explains that "Emma has the president in her pocket, and no doubt more of the government set for phase two. If Wide Awake is going to go ahead anyways, if certain people who ought to stop it are going to be eased into turning a blind eye, then I want in on Wide Awake. I'm not just detached from the Xavier School to get my PhD and make little mutant mice," she sums up, snorting softly and glancing towards the lab space before her eyes rivet on the screen. Her left hand extends behind her and telekineticall calls back the chair so recently flung by Shaw, as she states that "They're lacking a geneticist with a background in mutant genetics. I want to fill that gap. All the better to tell any drones that a few select genomes are just figment of their electronic imaginations."
Shaw has returned his attention to the display, and listens quietly without even mental comment, but by the end ... he closes his eyes. "Dr. Grey. Give me a break." Sarcasm swings hand-in-hand with scorn in his voice, his very manner, while he turns toward her and folds his arms. "You're going to play secret agent with the Hellfire Club? Do you have /any/ fucking idea -- no. I guess you don't, do you." Flat he makes it, not a question, and temper rises again, if sluggishly without immediate, provocative impetus. "You have no idea what you're dealing with, with these people. You'd be walking into their company like a lamb into the lions' den, and if they didn't tear you apart on the spot, they'd make a toy of you, a pretty moppet with no thought in her head but serving their needs. I've seen it done." He smiles, baring teeth like frost's flash in sudden sunlight. "/I've/ done it. I know these men and women, and you don't stand a chance against their combined force."
"So then what do you propose I do, Mr. Shaw?" Jean wonders, cocking her head to one side and eschewing the chair to lean on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over her chest. Her tongue flickers out once more, tasting, assessing damagae and deciding it to be superficial as the low burning heat of the strike mark on her face begins to fade from red to a rosy pink hue. "I'll see this through one way or the other, and I -would- point out that Emma Frost and I have stood toe to toe on the astral plane a time or two before. But I suppose I've spilled my plans to you good and proper now.," she admits, considering rather than rueful. "It's entirely possible you'll leave here tonight and cheerfully make a present of me to the others in order to get yourself back into the game instead of outside the circle."
"Don't be absurd. Turning in an amateur spy, however otherwise talented, wouldn't get me so much as a cup of coffee from those jackals." Shaw hitches his arms higher on his chest and lowers his head in juxtaposing scrutiny of the woman before him. Considering? Yes, that from him, too, but thoughts and emotions flickering too fast, too fleeting -- there. He settles on a slight smile and says, "I have significant doubts that you've spilled your plans, Grey, but no matter. I'm not spilling mine, either. Nevertheless, you /have/ done me a service by telling me about Dynamo. I'm flying to Rochester tomorrow to put their house into order, and now that I have a good idea why they've been so recalcitrant about accepting some of my directives ... well, the board and I will have a nice chat. Or does it suit your noble purpose for me to continue to play the oblivious patsy?"
"Well, if I'm really that incompetant," Jean points out with a wry smirk, "And, granted that you caught me, I can't argue the point all that much, I might suggest that I could use a native guide to this apparently man-eating world behind those terribly-posh doors of yours." She lets the suggestion hang in the air for a moment before shrugging slightly. "Do as you will. I'll find a way one way or another. There's no margin for failure."
Shaw repeats, "Noble," with a sneer rippling in his mind if not his expression, though his eyes do narrow to slits of black contempt. "And you're sacrificing yourself in this way to save us? Us mutants? Oh, Jean. Forgive me. Your dedication should inspire me, I know. Your activism. Especially--" and his voice rises from venomous calm into full-throated outrage, backed by a step closer to her "--when it's all over the fucking newspapers when I get back into town!" And another step. And a hard, seething glare. "What were you /thinking/?"
"What the hell do you -mean-, what was I thinking?" Jean wonders, meeting the glare with an exasperated look of her own. "For the love of God and little green apples, Sebastian, I'm an activist. It's what I -do-. I march, I orchestrate black armbands popping up across the country. I speak to fucking Senate hearings. This is hardly -news-, so what's crawled up your ass and died?"
So he hits her again, with the other hand across the other cheek, the other side of her mouth. And Shaw steps closer yet, pressing physical distance to a tight, heated squeeze between them. His face remains set in stony lines, and his voice drops back to a steadiness almost pleasant in contrast to his irate looming. "That march of yours is a joke, but it got enough airplay, it seems, to call yet more attention to you. I saw the local coverage. That Times article -- are you coercing even the bigots to your side now, Dr. Grey? A reporter, not that one, /found/ me outside the park this afternoon and /asked/ me, oh, so nicely, if I had any reaction to your delightful media stunt. I gave her some standard quote, but ... Jesus. What crawled up my ass and died? /You/ did, good doctor. You and your goddamn nobility. Your glittering presence on the political stage. Your drawing /attention/ to yourself right when I can't--" And bites down hard, but not before subvocalization completes it: << --afford it for /my/ plans. >>
Fresh blood from her lips, and a fresh flash of orange and red whirls again through Jean's gaze. She once again restrains that part of her that whispers and screams at her to reduce this angry man to cinders and a last few traumatized and fading thoughts. This time she slides sideways with the strike, one hand slapping down on the desk to balance herself. "And what plans would those be?" she plucks the thought from unspoken to aloud, tone all the more cool and focused. Controlled. Little cracks in that facade appear now and again, wicked and dark, entoxicating riptides of empathics speaking of a call to the hunt being overruled by logic before they're shoved away again. "Writing scripts for the actors in your world's stage, to borrow from the Bard?"
"You have such pretty eyes when you're angry," muses Shaw on velvet's torn, tearing purr. "Is that part of your gift? You'll have to tell me all about it. --My plans. Yes. Since you insist on prying where you're not wanted," and oh, the anger, the violated and terrified /anger/ behind that cool clause, rattling through the shadows of his mind like ravens' wings. He sighs. "Shakespeare had it easy. Never had to deal with the troupe of actors I do every day... You want into the Hellfire Club. Into its secrets."
"Suffice it to say," Jean chooses the words with care, and with a care for her split and tender lower lip, "That you don't want to see anything past these pretty eyes of mine. But go on, Sebastian Shaw," she encourages, cagey but interested, a hawk alert to the promise-filled rustle in the grass of his last words.
Shaw glides past her caveat with only a wary pinch of thought that doesn't trouble businessman's mask. "I can get you in. All the way to the top, actually, because that's just the kind of nice guy I am. But there would have to be an agreement. Several of them, actually." A smile dashes out a second's spontaneous humor. "We could get it drawn up in a contract."
"Signed in blood and with a black quill, no doubt?" Jean quips, a wryly appreciative smile curving her lips, curtailed by the twingle of parting flesh and a fresh rising of blood to fill the split gaps. "I'm still listening. And curious as to why exactly you should be so nice, rather than executing your captured spy."
"Because I need you, or someone like you, but you'll do, I think." Shaw's head tips. "Yes, you will. The masquerade was a good audition for you, and there's always the Hippocratic Oath, failing all other fail-safes...." Musing his way into shoulder's lean against the wall, he shrugs the other one. "There's nothing complex about my plans or my motives, Jean: I want to win the game I'm playing with Emma Frost, and I want to stay alive."
"I am," Jean points out, eyes alight with glints of perfectly mundane green, "Not exactly averse to anything that will screw over Emma Frost. As I'm sure gossip will let you know." She settles in her chair at last, accepting a lower height as she no longer feels the need for the psychological advantage of a near equal one. She spins the chair about and stops it with the toe of one half-booted foot pressed against the surface of Shaw's wall. "And, as you say, you -are- my patient, and I have a certain duty to keep you alive and well. What are your proposed several agreements?"
Shaw's smile widens a touch -- << Poor Emma, >> might chuckle through his foremind on a low and vicious level -- then drops away. "Basic ones. Simple, in fact. We would need to operate as equals and partners. I will share my plans with you as you share yours with mine, leaving out any personal or irrelevant details that the other doesn't need to worry about. You will not betray me; I will not betray you. /Partners,/" he emphasizes with heavy bitterness, "and yes, I'm aware that you heard it the first time, but permit a tired, frightened man his clinging need for reassurance. I can guide you in this game, as its several years' veteran, but at some point, you'll be on your own ... and you damned well better not come gunning for me."
"And, when I'm on my own, do I have any assurance that -you- won't come gunning for -me-?" Jean siezes on this final piece of the statement for analysis and consideration, the rest passed and accepted merely with simple nods here and there as she feels pertinent. She interlaces her fingers, letting the basket of her hands rest lightly on her uplifted knee. "Trade me in for a less infuriating model, or for a more compliant one? When you say equals and partners, I'm going to take that word and hold you to it, and I've never made a good yes-woman."
"You have my word," Shaw says wearily, "and I can sign that into blood if you so desire. I've had biddable compliance, and she traded herself in for an infuriating model, indeed. /Emma./" A wealth of emotions, associations, memories push behind the name, far richer in number and value even than he is, and he tightens his mouth. "Do what you will between the proscribed boundaries, Jean, even as I do. I can't ask for anything more than that, and have to trust you even more than I have to this point." Again, the small, honest smile. "And you know how cranky that makes me."
"I'll bring you medically approved amounts of brandy," Jean offers, meeting that touch of honestly with a tiny smile of her own, wary of the damaged lips. "And strawberries and cherries to theoretically counter it. But... agreed." she decides, consideration, calculation, planning and plotting and assessment all boiling down to one hair's turn moment. "Probationally. You have my trust and my word, but the ramifications of this deal are still rather nebulous. What -am- I walking into?"
Shaw says softly, "The Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. Has your spywork turned up anything on that?"
"Not by name, or only mere rumours, dismissed as unconfirmed and unproven," Jean replies. "I'd hazard a guess that the names I named earlier are part of it, since my aged and dignified grandfather's never said a thing."
Shaw tips head's inclining confirmation, and then his smile returns on fresh bitterness's bloom. "I was coming over here, before I got hit up by that damn reporter, to tell you that I'd checked our archives and found that you do have a legacy membership you can claim. And so much for that, but it /is/ useful now, since I have to bring you into the Circle and in a position requiring membership -- but I get ahead of myself." With a dark-sparkling touch, no less, to eyes and mind that marks his awareness of the histrionics. "The Inner Circle is the power behind, or within, the club. From Hellfire's power base, using its cover, the Circle comprises equal halves of rival players, playing off each other for internecine power. The one in this city has become unbalanced, dangerously so, and I'm seeking to rectify matters. I think that you could have a key role in that."
"Emma and Warren, the golden lovers paired in fate, song and tabloid?" Jean guesses, eyebrows lifted in appreciation for being self-aware in the face of histrionics. "And of course, you and Emma were once so paired. I gather yours is the losing side at the moment, in this power struggle, and you're not trying to balance things out of the sheer goodness of your heart and sense of fair play." The forgotten can of Coke is snabbled up, and she takes a measured sip. "So, I have carte blanche to attend society balls in my own right." she sums up. "What else is involved?"
Throttling anger out of his voice -- mostly -- Shaw says, "Yes, they are currently White Queen and King on our chessboard, and I'm the sadly lacking Black King, yes, yes, indeed. I need a Queen for balance, and to throw the White Court and its ruling couple into disarray if I can because they /will/ try to remove me if they can. Again: did you ever wonder why my happy face stopped appearing on the news last December?" Anger, wrath, /rage/ -- and such a level stare, such level words, calmly reciting a past and a future that might be someone else's. "The lovers are currently on the outs with each other, and since it's not an opening that will /stay/ open very long, knowing them, I aim to strike into it while I can, by bringing you aboard and setting you loose to ... do whatever you want, Jean. I don't care, really and truly, as long as it buttresses my own Court and my position. And keeps me alive."
Jean's expression is intent and focused, the bloodied lips and pink-stained cheeks a mere fright mask from which her intellect and poise peek out at the world. "The Black Queen," she tastes the title and its implications and, with a nod, finds them to her liking. "Very well. Give me a briefing and a golden apple, and I'll see what I can do for you. No doubt I'll have some suggestions and ideas in a few days' time, and..." She trails off, some private amusement bubbling up at a thought. "Yes, I have an idea for Emma I can put into practice right away. I'll tell you all about it when you're back from your trip."
Shaw deepens his lean against the wall and nods back. Emotion seeps away into shadows, and his thoughts are quiet. "Whatever you need, just let me know. I'll try to get it done before I leave, but time's tight...." He trails off. Shakes his head sharply. "I'll see what I can do," he says more firmly and then brightens his expression. "And I'll look forward to hearing about it. What a fine Eris you'll make, hm?"
"Just give me an email with an explanation of this chess board, and the names of who's playing what piece, and any sacred traditions I have to adhere to, and I can probably sail through on the rest." Jean assures, before another ginger smile appears. "I warn that I'll probably attend any required orgies by making people -think- I was there, though. But very well, I'm in," she concludes. She lifts her right hand and brushes it across her swollen lips, blooding it with a twitch of black-edged whimsy before extending it to Shaw. "Eris to your Ares."
With a chuckle edged with appreciation, and a reckless gamer's glee, Shaw clasps her hand for a firm shake. "Done," he says, quiet again, and lets her go. "Though I've always preferred Hades -- all the money, you know, and he's got a certain sense of style. And brains, which Ares lamentably does not." He glints a grin. "And the rest of the pantheon can take the hindmost. You'll have the email before I leave. Encrypted to a fare-thee-well, of course, but I trust that you can handle it, given what I've seen here tonight."
"I don't anticipate a problem with it, no," Jean allows comfortably, fingers prodding at her lip with medical interest once the deal has been formally and traditionally sealed. "My tradecraft may be lacking, my analysis is not. Godspeed to you, Sebastian, and pick whichever god you like best, if you want." Solicitous hostess that she is, she even rises to her feet, gives the broken door a look of disfavour, and makes sure to see him out.
X-Men MUCK - Sunday, September 04, 2005, 4:28 PM
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Greenwich Apts #1500 - Jean
A departure from neighbouring apartments, this converted artist's flat has been, well, reconverted. Disdaining the gentrified wealth of the rest of the upper levels, the original residential spirit of the building has been recaptured with an uncovering of the original brick outer walls and where the plain and smooth wooden board flooring has been lovingly wax-polished rather than made harshly gleaming with modern verathanes. As many interior walls as possible have been knocked down, leaving a large open concept space with natural light streaming in from the row of square-paned windows that stretches all along the outside wall. The remaining interior wall sections off one quarter of the flat, two doors leading to a palatial bathroom and to a large bedroom with a small inset balcony: the sole traces of the gentrification allowed to remain. The main room features a U-shaped kitchen area with breakfast bar by the windows and against the interior wall, with a raised area opposite it with metal and frosted glass privacy panels to form an office area. The rest of the space is taken up with a conversation half-circle of comfortable banquettes laden with cushions and pillows, interspersed with end tables and capable of comfortably seating a large party around the open space between them and a large entertainment center.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Logan comes to the door, wearing entirely standard clothes for him: clunky boots, comfortable jeans and a faded t-shirt. He has arrived with a late night chocolate cheesecake snack for Jean. Storebought, it's true, but it's a nice (if fattening) gesture to be coming out of no where.
Out of no-where, and he's even knocking. This isn't entirely without precedent, but it -is- unexpected. Jean's currently in the large bathroom of the apartment, door half open to the living room and the lights around the mirror set to full intensity. A few bits of bloody and damp kleenex litter the counter around the sink, as Jean instead focuses her attention on the trace amounts of fresh blood welling from the now-cleaned splits to her lower lip, and how best to get it looking properly cosmetic again. Her first aid kit is open, but that's a lot of movement in the area for surgical glue. Hrm... She spares a thought for the front door, opening it, and a wordless greeting for Logan, a brush of her mind against his before she returns to poking and prodding. "Wish I'd been awake in Hindman's class on minimization techniques," she mutters to herself.
Logan comes in as the door opens, shifting the cheesecake from under his arm so he can offer it to Jean. "Hey, Red," he calls into the bathroom. "I brought you fatty, chocolaty indulgence. Had a hard enough day to deserve it?" The question is intended as rhetorical, but he comes over toward the bathroom, not quite having realized just what Jean's doing, half-concealed in the bathroom.
"Have I told you lately that I love you?" Jean calls back, tacitly approving of any and all donations of cheesecake as she falls silent to push her lip into proper shape and apply pressure with more kleenex, holding it there with two fingers and gently rolling her eyes at her lack of a healing factor. << Just give me about ten minutes to get myself patched up, and another twenty to let things scab, and that cheesecake's days are numbered, if you'll help. >>
"Well, I never get tired of it," Logan replies, depositing the cake on a table before he starts to frown. << 'Patched up?' >> he reflects back at her, a definite sense of concern growing. << Sounds like a worse day than I expected. Did your mutant mice gang up on you? >> He refrains from intruding on Jean's cosmetic efforts and goes to steal one of her beers, giving him something to focus on other than Jean's condition.
<< No, no, >> Jean replies, her own mind tired and streaked with occasional mild twinges of 'ouch', but far from worried. << Just had Shaw come bursting into my office, pissed off at me for jeopardizing plans for me he hadn't bothered to tell me about. Oh, and incidentally figuring out that I was spying on his company. Cracked me across the face a couple times, but it got sorted out. >> She emerges from the bathroom at that, fingers still pinching the folded kleenex in place, and the dampness of freshly-applied tincture of arnica painted across the slight bruising on her cheeks. << Looks worse than it is. >>
A burning red surge of rage bursts in Logan's mind, obscuring the rocky landscape of his pockmarked psyche. << I'm going to kill him >> flashes with certainty across his mind, not deliberately broadcast but probably difficult to miss. If Shaw were standing in front of Logan at that moment, he would be perforated. The barest fraction of a second later, << No, I'm not going to kill him >> cuts off the first thought with equal certainty, and his mind clamps down on the rage. It is still there, but carefully contained. He puts a hand to his head. "Shit, sorry," he says, holding on to his forehead. "Shit. You're okay?"
Just as well Logan's come to his own decision on that matter, because there's a sudden bubble of unspoken 'No, you can't' that Jean's just as happy not to have to argue about. She tamps down on it, and then cautiously peels the kleenex away from her lower lip, probing gently and deciding it is good. "I'll heal," she assures, eyes frank even if she doesn't dare let herself get away with a wry grin and letting her lip bleed again. "Not as fast as you, but I'll heal. Honestly, he was pulling the hits. More frustration than anything else. If he'd seriously tried to hurt me, I would've had him on the floor," she assures, and with a hand lifted to rest on Logan's arm there's a strange sort of promise coded into the words. "Of course," she adds on, more wryly still. "This means I'm not going to be doing any kissing for a few days. Feel free to rough him up a little for that."
Oh, how well Jean knows her Wolverine. As much as he's firm about his decision not to tear Shaw to shreds and eat his heart, there is no way he will not be going looking for Shaw to have a frank discussion, quite likely in inhumanly solid knuckle-ese. He smiles at her final comment and lifts his hands to her waist. "Thanks, I think I will," he replies, the burner under his anger turning down to a low simmer and slipping into the back of his mind, to be unearthed at a later time. "I know you'd wipe the floor with him if you wanted to. But I hate to see you hurt." And since he can't kiss Jean's bloody lip, he tilts his head up to place one tenderly on her forehead.
To be fair, while Jean can't just go beat Shaw to a pulp and then expect him to work with her all that happily afterwards, there's a certain level of satisfaction spilling forth from her back brain where the Phoenix dwells. No, certain parts of Jean weren't happy at all, standing still and allowing the blows to fall. She risks a small smile and presses two fingers to her lips and then to Logan's. "I can even tie a scarf to your arm and you can be a properly traditional avenging knight," she jokes, before letting her eyes lift to his, steady and watchful. "I can't promise that this will be the only time I'm hurt, you know," she points out quietly. "Or that you'll be able to go beat in heads every time it happens either. Let me know if you find you have to take off again."
Logan smiles wryly at Jean. "Yeah, I know," he replies, as the image of himself with a little handkerchief under his shirt flashes through his mind with a definite sense of amusement, and just a little bit of pleasure despite the overt anachromism. "I can handle this...it's just...it's the first time since I've been back in your life like this that I've run into someone who isn't Scott hurting you. I don't think I'll freak out quite so much in the future. But I've got no desire to leave you. Except to knock in a couple of Shaw's teeth, and then I want to come straight back to you to celebrate my triumph."
"I'll make sure the beer is cold then," Jean replies, and while there are still questions in her eyes, still a lingering worry over yet another Stryker-like spectre showing up and sending him running out of misguided nobility, for the moment, that assurance is enough. She ventures another tiny little smile, testing the limits of the forming scabs, and then tips her head over towards the couches. "So, now that you've made off with one of my beers, want to help me with that cheesecake?" she wonders with a partial subject change, "I've got some damn' good news that's come out of tonight, and you're one of five people in the world who gets to hear about all of it."
"Well, if you twist my arm, I might help you eat a little," Logan replies dryly. He goes and actually opens the beer he swiped earlier. "So you got something out of him? Other than him figuring out some of what you were after from him?" There is a definite greedy eagerness for news in Logan's mind which he gives full reign for the moment. It helps keep that simmering anger well contained on the back burner. He drifts for the kitchen to get some silverware for the cheesecake.
"Turns out he didn't have a clue about Wide Awake, or anything else the other high-ups in Hellfire were playing." Jean commences her minor debriefing, settling back and fashioning a small and comfortable nest of pillows on one of the banquettes, with room for two to sit. She sighs with relief at taking some of the stress off of her overworked feet, and then continues. "Basically, Emma and her crew were playing him as a patsy. I filled him in on things, and then he allowed that he'd come over all in a huff because he'd planned to make me his counterpart in their inner circle, and here I'd gone off and held that Unity March and gotten all over the papers. We decided I'd take on the job anyways. So... I'm in."
Logan cuts two generously large slices out of the cheese cake. With careful arrangement of his large hands and fingers, he manages to hold both slices and his beer. "Excellent," he replies, offering Jean her cake with a fork. "So when're you gonna be meeting the rest of his inner circle?"
"Well," Jean replies, carefully maneuvering her cake out and away without disturbing Logan's and his beer, "Part of my new job description as Black Queen -- Did I tell you they all hold ranks named after chess pieces? Pretentious as hell. -- Anyways, part of what he wants me for is to mess with Emma Frost. I was going to go in and threaten her a bit for messing with Scott's mind and making him sleep with her one last time, and then letting Warren catch them the next morning... I think it might be particularly fun to go in and do it as her new rival she knows nothing about."
Logan lifts an eyebrow at the mention of chess pieces. << Yeeeeeeah, >> goes his mental voice. Pretentious indeed. Then he settles himself in with beer and rich, flavorful goodness. "Hah. Kick her ass right back into the shape it was in before all the surgery. She slept with Scott again? What was she trying to do, fuck up a personal best number of personal lives with one, one carnal act?"
Jean snorts a blackly appreciative laugh at the frank language, and maneuvers a bite of cheesecake in for a landing. "Hell if I know," she replies. "And frankly, I don't care if her intentions were a wholly-innocent attempt to try and bask in the redeeming glow of Scott's loins because she'd seen the error of her ways, the fact that she resorted to mental messing around to do it is enough to mean she and I need to have a talk. So I guess we're both going to be celebrating, huh?"
Logan chuckles blackly and nods. "I think the opportunity to kick Emma and Shaw's asses shoulda been on our agendas for a long, long time," he replies dryly. "'Cause it sounds like /way/ too much fun."
"Even if I do think yours is probably going to be the more literal ass-kicking," Jean points out with dancing eyes, and a rapid disappearance of cheesecake. Impishly, she steals Logan's beer to take a swig to wash it down with, tilting her chin as if daring him to do something about it. More seriously, she continues that "Tweaking Emma's probably going to be one of the few high points of this next stage. I'm going to be surrounding myself with rich, powerful, selfish people who are all at least keeping an eye on how best to stab everyone in the back."
Logan gives Jean a brief don't-mess-with-a-Canadian's-beer glower, but from Jean, he will withstand many indignities that he would not endure from just any hot chick. "Thank goodness you're not a telepath, or you'd probably wind up burdened with a whole host of unwanted and unpleasant mental imagery. Oh, wait..." He does a deliberately unconvincing 'surprised realization,' putting one hand over an o shaped mouth.
"Yeah," Jean looks wry, finishing off her cheesecake in record time, and falling silent with her hand shifting to rest on Logan's thigh, squeezing lightly. "I have a feeling I'm probably going to be unloading a lot of that burden on you. Scott, well, clearly he's still got Emma's interest somehow. Warren, enough said. Storm spends most of her time fussing at me and warning me to be careful, and the Professor... well," She snorts gently and smiles carefully. Some baggage, you don't share with a father figure. "So you're the lucky bastard who gets to see me vent. Although I suspect you -enjoyed- that last sparring session..."
Logan grins, his expression broad and full of teeth with a notable edge. "Oh you know it," he replies. Then he sobers a bit. "Seriously Jean, I'm here for what you need. Unload what you need, and I'll keep my desires to rip people to shreds under control." If he's not going to kill Shaw today, he's probably not going to kill anyone without a rather compelling reason.
"And I guess I can always just displace the anger into dragging you into bed and keeping you there," Jean muses with an innocuously lifted eyebrow, forcing herself to focus on positives rather than the mouth of Hell (Or Hellfire.) that's opened up in front of her. The hand on Logan's thigh squeezes again. "And can I just say I'm very glad that Shaw doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in the idea a Black Court romance. Of course, the idea of Shaw and romance in the same sentence makes my brain hurt anyways. But it's simpler."
Logan's brain is not at all fond of the idea of a Black Court romance, especially given what he takes as Shaw's propensity for for random abusive violence. Jean, however, is much more fun to imagine in bed than Shaw. "Hey, any time you need to be kept busy for a night, gimme a call and I'll be comin' runnin'." He pauses, as a double entendre rolls through his head, then rejects it; in the order he suggested, it doesn't sound that satisfying.
No, no it doesn't. Bit messy and uncomfortable, really. Jean settles in sideways to lean up against Logan, and lifts her head to nuzzle at one ear, before there's a twingle of pain from her lip and a heartfelt "-Fucking- Shaw." as she rests her forehead on Logan's shoulder instead. "Don't suppose you figured out some way to share your healing factor?" she wonders, sounding a trifle muffled with her face still screened by t-shirt and solid warm flesh. "I think the worst part of this is that these cuts and bruises are so minor there isn't anything I can do about them but wait four days to a week for them to be gone."
"Not with anyone but Rogue, we remember how well /that/ worked," Logan replies. He arranges himself to nicely envelop Jean in his arms. His hairy cheek rests on the top of Jean's head. "Abuse is tough like that. It sneaks up on ya. Just never quite enough to get really pissed enough to need to stop things."
"I honestly don't feel abused, though," Jean points out, shifting so that she's no longer addressing Logan's armpit. (So romantic.) "I mean, I'm the one who made the call that taking a couple cracks across the face was a good tradeoff for getting to where I needed to go. I didn't cower, I didn't feel particularly threatened, and I had to pretty much refrain from assisting him out of the building via a trip through a plate glass window. I don't doubt he -does- beat up women if he feels like it," she allows, staring consideringly at a spot four feet in front of her and sneaking an arm around behind Logan as he gathers her to him. "But I don't get the vibe that he sees me as any more inferior to him than he sees the rest of the world. He wasn't bullshitting when he said he wanted an equal partner. And I wouldn't have taken that offer as anything less, and he knows it. So," she sums up. "I think he needs a good smacking, sure, but because he's a nasty bastard with a nastier temper, not because he's making me feel powerless and afraid."
Logan is not entirely convinced by Jean's arguments, but he does seem somewhat mollified, not least because Jean is willing to discuss it. "Well, I also owe him a slug for Alyssa, too, so he's definitely going to feel the burn before we're done. If he's gonna make you his equal, though, bear in mind that you'll have a damned good excuse not to take any more of that quality of shit any more, okay? And you'll have plenty of reason to put him back in his place."
"As I fully intend to, and told him myself," Jean agrees, the hand wrapped around Logan rising to let her run her fingers soothingly through his hair. Whether she's soothing herself, him, or the both of them is up to interpretation. "This was an incident I intend to have remain an isolated one, and if he hits me again, he takes a nap. I don't think I can change him, I don't give a damn' about changing him, in fact, and I certainly don't think he's just misinderstood. I'm not in love with him, I don't admire him, and..." She trails off and drums her fingers against the crown of the Wolverine's mighty 'do. "Am I missing any of the other lies abused women tell themselves? Oh, and I know perfectly well this isn't my fault for making him mad. There." She leans in, and while she remembers in time that she can't punctuate herself with a proper kiss, she does manage to deliver a light and gentle one without incident.
Logan is gentle with the return of the kiss. "Well, I guess a telepath /ought/ to be fairly self aware," he replies dryly. "All right, I won't worry about your mental state. I'll just worry about how pissed Shaw is gonna be when I finish with him." He shifts in his seat and settles against her more firmly. "So. You gonna be free to go looking for trouble some time soon? So you can share a little bit in the cathartic violence?"
Jean sniffs gently, and opines that "Frankly, I think you can place your worries on better faces than his," before a little smile creeps across her features. "Oh yeah," she agrees. "I think as soon as the lip's healed up, in fact. Tomorrow is the cathartic cattiness of messing with Emma, bright and early, but I'm sure I'll be amassing a lot of wonderful frustrations with no Danger Room to bleed them off in. The word down at Lennox Hill is that someone's shipping White China through the heroin dealers, and they've seen a huge spike in ODs coming through as a result. There are some very tired and frustrated ER docs who'd like to see that stop."
Logan shakes his head sadly. "Seriously. Why the hell does someone want to sell shit that's /too/ /pure/? Stupid ass druggies. Be nice to kick 'em into next week." One more ass to add to Logan's list of kickables. Or a class of asses, perhaps. "I want full details about Emma's come uppance. I'll tell you all about Shaw; might take me a little while to catch up with him."
"Market dynamics," Jean replies, even if the question is a rhetorical one. "Flood the streets with too much heroin, the price per gram drops. Keep it at a high purity, you keep the price high, and if you start killing people because they take too much not knowing, well, there will always be others, now won't there?" There's a hard look in her eyes, for Jean has done her shifts in the ER too, and has seen the ODs wheeled in. She shakes her head to clear it, and then finds her little smile again. "I'm planning to be at the Hellfire Clubhouse for 9:30. If you don't have to head right back to the school, you could maybe spend the night and I could be back to tell you over brunch and coffee?"
Logan mmmms and smiles with that particular wolfish quality that seems to either frighten women off or have them catchimg their breath. "Oh, you know how to hold a man in your thrall," he says, a gleam in his eye. "Nice not to have to wait to hear about the chaos you're gonna unleash right in Emma's kitchen."
"I thirst for chaos," Jean intones solemnly, before the wolfish quality of the smile neatly separates Jean into the category of catching her breath. Mmmm indeed. She leans in to give him another highly-careful kiss, and then rises to collect the cake plates and saunter for the kitchen area and the bedroom door beyond it. "See you in bed, then," she invites. "I've got a nice early morning of mild social mayhem ahead of me."
Logan goes to put the remainder of the cheesecake in the refrigerator. "I won't keep you waiting long," he promises. "Sounds like better day than the one I'm declaring ended just before I arrived."
"I like the way you think, mister," replies a Jean growing rapidly more pleased with life by the minute, and with a sway to her hips as she slips in behind Logan to drape her arms over his shoulders before finishing the saunter through the bedroom door and out of sight. Cheesecake, mild cuddling and promises of violence and retribution on her behalf: what more could a girl want?
X-Men MUCK - Thursday, September 01, 2005, 8:01 PM
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McClintock Center - Gradient Genetech
Not the grandest or largest of the suites available, Gradient Genetech shares a similar quality of 'shiny and new' all the same. A small conference/reception area with a front desk, two loveseats and a coffee table is visible from the hallway, with three doors leading off from it. One is to a small office on the left, the other to a storage and supply room of equal size. The door at the back leads to the main laboratory space, which takes up a full half of the suite's footprint. While it's not as well-equipped as Dr. Grey's lab back 'home', it nonetheless features PCR machines, microscopes, a robotic pipetter, and all the other tools of a geneticist's trade, along with a small exam room for human patients, curtained off with glass walls and sliding doors. Another area behind other temporary walls is alive with the sounds of squeaking and tussling, courtesy of cages full of well-kept lab mice.
[Exits : [H]allway ]
Clackity clackity clack, the sounds of typing at a fevered pace Jean remembers from days of term papers and lab reports. Throw in mouse clicks and the occasional clinks of a can of Coke set on the surface of the desk, and we have the symphony of the computer jockey. Reading glasses sliding down her nose as she rubs at her eyes for the twelfth time in twenty minutes, Jean peers blearily at an Excel spreadsheet as if hoping the interpretation of the data will somehow do itself. Conclusions... hanging just out of reach, visible, tangible, like a juicy peach on a high tree branch. She sighs, and swears softly into the emptiness of the office. "Fucking Wide Awake."
Oh, fortunate day, that it is finally ending, under cover of well-advanced evening, and that it has delivered one comprehensively pissed-off Sebastian Shaw to the McClintock Center's doorstep. While his driver putters down to parking, he swipes a key card past the reader's gate to push inside, and push inside he does, a roiling, boiling bubble of black-hot energy only just contained in his dark suit and darker mind. The ride up the elevator mitigates somewhat -- trapped in a small, tight box, and the coldness it imposes around his edges -- but angry still, as he tugs at pale-rose shirt's collar buttons to let in more air. By the time he's out again, all but pouncing onto Gradient's floor, he is a more controlled tycoon and emotional typhoon. Well. Until he reaches the final barrier, just one more damn door, between him and his goal, that is.
Jean is not unaware of this particular cyclone of emotional discontent approaching, but, perhaps unwisely, she chooses to ignore it. Tuned into the work in front of her with a scientist and surgeon's narrow focus on the here-and-now, the black and storming Shaw is written off as irrelevant data until he chooses to make himself known. Click, click, clack, and a GIS program that makes the Excel file look like a kindergarten addition chart is brought up. Names are input from a file, along with locations, and with a click, click, double click, analysis begins. "C'mon, c'mon," Jean mutters to the program, waiting for the map of the eastern seaboard in front of her to light up with the program's results. As an afterthought, she reaches a vague twitch of her powers to turn the lights on in the little reception area. There are magazines. There are news clippings. There is a coffee maker. That should hold him, she decides, engaging in a little intellectual triage.
Yes, because that is /exactly/ what Shaw wants to do right now: sit quietly in a chair and leaf through a magazine. Maybe dab his finger on his tongue to provide the proper sticking friction every now and then for turning the next page. No. And /no,/ if the lights can go on and by themselves, but of /course/ not by themselves, and if she is inside, and if she -- if she-- He paces hard away from the lab's door, spins hard around, and stares hard at it. A sliding door, with a handle instead of a knob. Further cold anneals his mind's heat into resolve, and he returns to the portal to grasp the handle in both hands and /yank./
The door protests! The door protests mightily, in fact, sticking stubbornly until there's a squeal and a snap of overstressed metal, the little hooked catch keeping it locked being no longer hooked 'nor catching. Jean's reaction is immediate and instinctive, spinning in her chair and jumping to her feet, screen shielded with her body by reflex as she snaps out a "Jesus -Christ-, Sebastian, there's a thing called -knocking-, for the love of God." Mild blasphemy enthusiastically committed, she whips off her reading glasses and drops them in her lab coat pocket with a jerky adrenaline kick to her movements.
"Lovely to see you, too, Dr. Grey," Shaw replies on his step past the door, past the blasphemy, into her lair with a hard, bright smile to match his eyes' raven shine. "I thought you might want more data on my mutation for any future modelling you might find cause to do. --Oh." He makes a regretful face as he considers her stance. "Have I interrupted you? Is this a bad time?"
"Yes," Jean's smiling as she replies, but it's a pained and painful one, teeth gritted more than grinning. "I was in the middle of an entire raft of data analysis, I could see a few conclusions in my head, and now you've done a great impression of a bull in my mental china shop, thanks. Can you give me ten minutes to wrap up?" she asks, although the fact that she turns her back on Shaw, still shielding the screen, and begins hastily saving and closing windows, rather puts the lie to any thought that it's a request. The GIS software is still trying to analyze and solve, and refuses to be closed despite the incriminating names and logos starting to pop up on the map. One needn't be a telepath to interpret Jean's thoughts: Oh -shit-, hurry -up-.
Shaw stalks right after her, preceded by hot and eager thought like a wavefront. "Ten minutes?" he repeats. "And after I've come all this way, and have wreaked such havoc on your door and my biology alike -- no. No, I'm not going to wait. This is more important than whatever that prog--" Again the interruption, but this one isn't dramatically feigned. It's honest, and so's his mental reaction: curiosity lunging to the fore, shouldering through irritation and anger. "What /is/ that? What are you doing?"
And *blip*, up turns the one name Jean was hoping would take a while. Dynamo. She pales for a moment, and then decides with a lunatic edge and a grin gone suddenly bright-beaming to throw one last maverick card into the deck. Simple honesty. "That's a GIS program that's helping me conduct industrial espionage." she informs him, grin vanished and tone dead level. Behind her, her hands grip the back of her desk chair like a vise. "One of my targets is your company, although I don't think you know half of what I've figured out."
And crack, out flashes Shaw's hand in a flattened, calculated blow across her face. "Then why don't you shut your fucking mouth," he says levelly, "and tell me, you clever bitch."
Jean's head snaps backwards with the force of the blow. Turrning with it enough to remain on her feet without stumbling, the force is nonetheless enough to split her lip and raise an angry red mark across her face. Slowly, steadily, like a statue come to life, she turns her head back and regards Shaw with burning, smouldering, -considering- eyes. No cowed cringing from this one: instead, wildness and war, carefully subsubed by will. "All right," she accedes, spinning the chair around and motioning for Shaw to sit as she brings the rest of the files back up online. "Ever heard of a little project called Wide Awake?"
"No. Governmental?" Clipped is the question, and cold is Shaw, cold and hard and dark. He's /not/ sitting, but standing, and his hand has curled around the back of the offered chair. He leans on it to see the screen better. "Dynamo," he mutters. "Goddamn sons of--"
"Used to be," Jean agrees. "Now... I suspect the government knows not what its little project has grown up into. This is what Wide Awake is," she pulls up a .pdf file to illustrate, letting Shaw skim and process the project summary before she calls up more files, and indicates the GIS program's list of names. "Recognize a common thread amongst the people at the helms of these companies?" she wonders. "Michael Spaggiari, Angela Dubois, Edward Albert Smythe III, Kingsley Fisher, Allison Pellegrini... Emma Frost."
"And you."
The hand tightens spasmodically on the chair back, and tendons line long tension down Shaw's neck. << /Emma,/ >> his mind rumbles like approaching thunder, but all he says, eyes never leaving the screen and baritone never leaving its even calm, is, "This is nothing I am familiar with. Nothing I know about. What are they doing? What /is/ Wide Awake?"
"Wide Awake is a project dedicated to the creation of a prototype for a system of mutant detection and pursuit drones," Jean decants a precis like a grad student teaching their first freshman class. She quite ignores the hot and sticky trickle of blood from the split and welling lip, tongue flashing once or twice to clear it but nothing beyond that. "It was once a black ops project for the government, and now it seems some of your Hellfire Club cronies have taken it for their own. With you conveniently outside their circle." she concludes. "Probably to be a patsy if they needed to cut losses."
Anger and disbelief and power flex as one, sending the chair crashing into the wall at the end of Shaw's sideways jerk. Fists clamp to his side, and he breathes hard for a moment. "Yes," he says then, and still, so admirably, damnably level. "Yes, they would do that. /She/ would. God/dam/mit!" His control wavers, and his temper flares, and he narrows his eyes away from the screen and onto her. "And you're interested in this because...? Not for the financial or political well-being of your latest patient, I'm sure."
"Of course not," Jean replies, no trace of her flippant lighthearted approach of earlier months in sight. No, this is a time for frankness and for solemnity, and with her eyes sharp and glittery as a scalpel's edge, she explains that "Emma has the president in her pocket, and no doubt more of the government set for phase two. If Wide Awake is going to go ahead anyways, if certain people who ought to stop it are going to be eased into turning a blind eye, then I want in on Wide Awake. I'm not just detached from the Xavier School to get my PhD and make little mutant mice," she sums up, snorting softly and glancing towards the lab space before her eyes rivet on the screen. Her left hand extends behind her and telekineticall calls back the chair so recently flung by Shaw, as she states that "They're lacking a geneticist with a background in mutant genetics. I want to fill that gap. All the better to tell any drones that a few select genomes are just figment of their electronic imaginations."
Shaw has returned his attention to the display, and listens quietly without even mental comment, but by the end ... he closes his eyes. "Dr. Grey. Give me a break." Sarcasm swings hand-in-hand with scorn in his voice, his very manner, while he turns toward her and folds his arms. "You're going to play secret agent with the Hellfire Club? Do you have /any/ fucking idea -- no. I guess you don't, do you." Flat he makes it, not a question, and temper rises again, if sluggishly without immediate, provocative impetus. "You have no idea what you're dealing with, with these people. You'd be walking into their company like a lamb into the lions' den, and if they didn't tear you apart on the spot, they'd make a toy of you, a pretty moppet with no thought in her head but serving their needs. I've seen it done." He smiles, baring teeth like frost's flash in sudden sunlight. "/I've/ done it. I know these men and women, and you don't stand a chance against their combined force."
"So then what do you propose I do, Mr. Shaw?" Jean wonders, cocking her head to one side and eschewing the chair to lean on the edge of her desk, arms crossed over her chest. Her tongue flickers out once more, tasting, assessing damagae and deciding it to be superficial as the low burning heat of the strike mark on her face begins to fade from red to a rosy pink hue. "I'll see this through one way or the other, and I -would- point out that Emma Frost and I have stood toe to toe on the astral plane a time or two before. But I suppose I've spilled my plans to you good and proper now.," she admits, considering rather than rueful. "It's entirely possible you'll leave here tonight and cheerfully make a present of me to the others in order to get yourself back into the game instead of outside the circle."
"Don't be absurd. Turning in an amateur spy, however otherwise talented, wouldn't get me so much as a cup of coffee from those jackals." Shaw hitches his arms higher on his chest and lowers his head in juxtaposing scrutiny of the woman before him. Considering? Yes, that from him, too, but thoughts and emotions flickering too fast, too fleeting -- there. He settles on a slight smile and says, "I have significant doubts that you've spilled your plans, Grey, but no matter. I'm not spilling mine, either. Nevertheless, you /have/ done me a service by telling me about Dynamo. I'm flying to Rochester tomorrow to put their house into order, and now that I have a good idea why they've been so recalcitrant about accepting some of my directives ... well, the board and I will have a nice chat. Or does it suit your noble purpose for me to continue to play the oblivious patsy?"
"Well, if I'm really that incompetant," Jean points out with a wry smirk, "And, granted that you caught me, I can't argue the point all that much, I might suggest that I could use a native guide to this apparently man-eating world behind those terribly-posh doors of yours." She lets the suggestion hang in the air for a moment before shrugging slightly. "Do as you will. I'll find a way one way or another. There's no margin for failure."
Shaw repeats, "Noble," with a sneer rippling in his mind if not his expression, though his eyes do narrow to slits of black contempt. "And you're sacrificing yourself in this way to save us? Us mutants? Oh, Jean. Forgive me. Your dedication should inspire me, I know. Your activism. Especially--" and his voice rises from venomous calm into full-throated outrage, backed by a step closer to her "--when it's all over the fucking newspapers when I get back into town!" And another step. And a hard, seething glare. "What were you /thinking/?"
"What the hell do you -mean-, what was I thinking?" Jean wonders, meeting the glare with an exasperated look of her own. "For the love of God and little green apples, Sebastian, I'm an activist. It's what I -do-. I march, I orchestrate black armbands popping up across the country. I speak to fucking Senate hearings. This is hardly -news-, so what's crawled up your ass and died?"
So he hits her again, with the other hand across the other cheek, the other side of her mouth. And Shaw steps closer yet, pressing physical distance to a tight, heated squeeze between them. His face remains set in stony lines, and his voice drops back to a steadiness almost pleasant in contrast to his irate looming. "That march of yours is a joke, but it got enough airplay, it seems, to call yet more attention to you. I saw the local coverage. That Times article -- are you coercing even the bigots to your side now, Dr. Grey? A reporter, not that one, /found/ me outside the park this afternoon and /asked/ me, oh, so nicely, if I had any reaction to your delightful media stunt. I gave her some standard quote, but ... Jesus. What crawled up my ass and died? /You/ did, good doctor. You and your goddamn nobility. Your glittering presence on the political stage. Your drawing /attention/ to yourself right when I can't--" And bites down hard, but not before subvocalization completes it: << --afford it for /my/ plans. >>
Fresh blood from her lips, and a fresh flash of orange and red whirls again through Jean's gaze. She once again restrains that part of her that whispers and screams at her to reduce this angry man to cinders and a last few traumatized and fading thoughts. This time she slides sideways with the strike, one hand slapping down on the desk to balance herself. "And what plans would those be?" she plucks the thought from unspoken to aloud, tone all the more cool and focused. Controlled. Little cracks in that facade appear now and again, wicked and dark, entoxicating riptides of empathics speaking of a call to the hunt being overruled by logic before they're shoved away again. "Writing scripts for the actors in your world's stage, to borrow from the Bard?"
"You have such pretty eyes when you're angry," muses Shaw on velvet's torn, tearing purr. "Is that part of your gift? You'll have to tell me all about it. --My plans. Yes. Since you insist on prying where you're not wanted," and oh, the anger, the violated and terrified /anger/ behind that cool clause, rattling through the shadows of his mind like ravens' wings. He sighs. "Shakespeare had it easy. Never had to deal with the troupe of actors I do every day... You want into the Hellfire Club. Into its secrets."
"Suffice it to say," Jean chooses the words with care, and with a care for her split and tender lower lip, "That you don't want to see anything past these pretty eyes of mine. But go on, Sebastian Shaw," she encourages, cagey but interested, a hawk alert to the promise-filled rustle in the grass of his last words.
Shaw glides past her caveat with only a wary pinch of thought that doesn't trouble businessman's mask. "I can get you in. All the way to the top, actually, because that's just the kind of nice guy I am. But there would have to be an agreement. Several of them, actually." A smile dashes out a second's spontaneous humor. "We could get it drawn up in a contract."
"Signed in blood and with a black quill, no doubt?" Jean quips, a wryly appreciative smile curving her lips, curtailed by the twingle of parting flesh and a fresh rising of blood to fill the split gaps. "I'm still listening. And curious as to why exactly you should be so nice, rather than executing your captured spy."
"Because I need you, or someone like you, but you'll do, I think." Shaw's head tips. "Yes, you will. The masquerade was a good audition for you, and there's always the Hippocratic Oath, failing all other fail-safes...." Musing his way into shoulder's lean against the wall, he shrugs the other one. "There's nothing complex about my plans or my motives, Jean: I want to win the game I'm playing with Emma Frost, and I want to stay alive."
"I am," Jean points out, eyes alight with glints of perfectly mundane green, "Not exactly averse to anything that will screw over Emma Frost. As I'm sure gossip will let you know." She settles in her chair at last, accepting a lower height as she no longer feels the need for the psychological advantage of a near equal one. She spins the chair about and stops it with the toe of one half-booted foot pressed against the surface of Shaw's wall. "And, as you say, you -are- my patient, and I have a certain duty to keep you alive and well. What are your proposed several agreements?"
Shaw's smile widens a touch -- << Poor Emma, >> might chuckle through his foremind on a low and vicious level -- then drops away. "Basic ones. Simple, in fact. We would need to operate as equals and partners. I will share my plans with you as you share yours with mine, leaving out any personal or irrelevant details that the other doesn't need to worry about. You will not betray me; I will not betray you. /Partners,/" he emphasizes with heavy bitterness, "and yes, I'm aware that you heard it the first time, but permit a tired, frightened man his clinging need for reassurance. I can guide you in this game, as its several years' veteran, but at some point, you'll be on your own ... and you damned well better not come gunning for me."
"And, when I'm on my own, do I have any assurance that -you- won't come gunning for -me-?" Jean siezes on this final piece of the statement for analysis and consideration, the rest passed and accepted merely with simple nods here and there as she feels pertinent. She interlaces her fingers, letting the basket of her hands rest lightly on her uplifted knee. "Trade me in for a less infuriating model, or for a more compliant one? When you say equals and partners, I'm going to take that word and hold you to it, and I've never made a good yes-woman."
"You have my word," Shaw says wearily, "and I can sign that into blood if you so desire. I've had biddable compliance, and she traded herself in for an infuriating model, indeed. /Emma./" A wealth of emotions, associations, memories push behind the name, far richer in number and value even than he is, and he tightens his mouth. "Do what you will between the proscribed boundaries, Jean, even as I do. I can't ask for anything more than that, and have to trust you even more than I have to this point." Again, the small, honest smile. "And you know how cranky that makes me."
"I'll bring you medically approved amounts of brandy," Jean offers, meeting that touch of honestly with a tiny smile of her own, wary of the damaged lips. "And strawberries and cherries to theoretically counter it. But... agreed." she decides, consideration, calculation, planning and plotting and assessment all boiling down to one hair's turn moment. "Probationally. You have my trust and my word, but the ramifications of this deal are still rather nebulous. What -am- I walking into?"
Shaw says softly, "The Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club. Has your spywork turned up anything on that?"
"Not by name, or only mere rumours, dismissed as unconfirmed and unproven," Jean replies. "I'd hazard a guess that the names I named earlier are part of it, since my aged and dignified grandfather's never said a thing."
Shaw tips head's inclining confirmation, and then his smile returns on fresh bitterness's bloom. "I was coming over here, before I got hit up by that damn reporter, to tell you that I'd checked our archives and found that you do have a legacy membership you can claim. And so much for that, but it /is/ useful now, since I have to bring you into the Circle and in a position requiring membership -- but I get ahead of myself." With a dark-sparkling touch, no less, to eyes and mind that marks his awareness of the histrionics. "The Inner Circle is the power behind, or within, the club. From Hellfire's power base, using its cover, the Circle comprises equal halves of rival players, playing off each other for internecine power. The one in this city has become unbalanced, dangerously so, and I'm seeking to rectify matters. I think that you could have a key role in that."
"Emma and Warren, the golden lovers paired in fate, song and tabloid?" Jean guesses, eyebrows lifted in appreciation for being self-aware in the face of histrionics. "And of course, you and Emma were once so paired. I gather yours is the losing side at the moment, in this power struggle, and you're not trying to balance things out of the sheer goodness of your heart and sense of fair play." The forgotten can of Coke is snabbled up, and she takes a measured sip. "So, I have carte blanche to attend society balls in my own right." she sums up. "What else is involved?"
Throttling anger out of his voice -- mostly -- Shaw says, "Yes, they are currently White Queen and King on our chessboard, and I'm the sadly lacking Black King, yes, yes, indeed. I need a Queen for balance, and to throw the White Court and its ruling couple into disarray if I can because they /will/ try to remove me if they can. Again: did you ever wonder why my happy face stopped appearing on the news last December?" Anger, wrath, /rage/ -- and such a level stare, such level words, calmly reciting a past and a future that might be someone else's. "The lovers are currently on the outs with each other, and since it's not an opening that will /stay/ open very long, knowing them, I aim to strike into it while I can, by bringing you aboard and setting you loose to ... do whatever you want, Jean. I don't care, really and truly, as long as it buttresses my own Court and my position. And keeps me alive."
Jean's expression is intent and focused, the bloodied lips and pink-stained cheeks a mere fright mask from which her intellect and poise peek out at the world. "The Black Queen," she tastes the title and its implications and, with a nod, finds them to her liking. "Very well. Give me a briefing and a golden apple, and I'll see what I can do for you. No doubt I'll have some suggestions and ideas in a few days' time, and..." She trails off, some private amusement bubbling up at a thought. "Yes, I have an idea for Emma I can put into practice right away. I'll tell you all about it when you're back from your trip."
Shaw deepens his lean against the wall and nods back. Emotion seeps away into shadows, and his thoughts are quiet. "Whatever you need, just let me know. I'll try to get it done before I leave, but time's tight...." He trails off. Shakes his head sharply. "I'll see what I can do," he says more firmly and then brightens his expression. "And I'll look forward to hearing about it. What a fine Eris you'll make, hm?"
"Just give me an email with an explanation of this chess board, and the names of who's playing what piece, and any sacred traditions I have to adhere to, and I can probably sail through on the rest." Jean assures, before another ginger smile appears. "I warn that I'll probably attend any required orgies by making people -think- I was there, though. But very well, I'm in," she concludes. She lifts her right hand and brushes it across her swollen lips, blooding it with a twitch of black-edged whimsy before extending it to Shaw. "Eris to your Ares."
With a chuckle edged with appreciation, and a reckless gamer's glee, Shaw clasps her hand for a firm shake. "Done," he says, quiet again, and lets her go. "Though I've always preferred Hades -- all the money, you know, and he's got a certain sense of style. And brains, which Ares lamentably does not." He glints a grin. "And the rest of the pantheon can take the hindmost. You'll have the email before I leave. Encrypted to a fare-thee-well, of course, but I trust that you can handle it, given what I've seen here tonight."
"I don't anticipate a problem with it, no," Jean allows comfortably, fingers prodding at her lip with medical interest once the deal has been formally and traditionally sealed. "My tradecraft may be lacking, my analysis is not. Godspeed to you, Sebastian, and pick whichever god you like best, if you want." Solicitous hostess that she is, she even rises to her feet, gives the broken door a look of disfavour, and makes sure to see him out.
X-Men MUCK - Sunday, September 04, 2005, 4:28 PM
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Greenwich Apts #1500 - Jean
A departure from neighbouring apartments, this converted artist's flat has been, well, reconverted. Disdaining the gentrified wealth of the rest of the upper levels, the original residential spirit of the building has been recaptured with an uncovering of the original brick outer walls and where the plain and smooth wooden board flooring has been lovingly wax-polished rather than made harshly gleaming with modern verathanes. As many interior walls as possible have been knocked down, leaving a large open concept space with natural light streaming in from the row of square-paned windows that stretches all along the outside wall. The remaining interior wall sections off one quarter of the flat, two doors leading to a palatial bathroom and to a large bedroom with a small inset balcony: the sole traces of the gentrification allowed to remain. The main room features a U-shaped kitchen area with breakfast bar by the windows and against the interior wall, with a raised area opposite it with metal and frosted glass privacy panels to form an office area. The rest of the space is taken up with a conversation half-circle of comfortable banquettes laden with cushions and pillows, interspersed with end tables and capable of comfortably seating a large party around the open space between them and a large entertainment center.
[Exits : [O]ut ]
Logan comes to the door, wearing entirely standard clothes for him: clunky boots, comfortable jeans and a faded t-shirt. He has arrived with a late night chocolate cheesecake snack for Jean. Storebought, it's true, but it's a nice (if fattening) gesture to be coming out of no where.
Out of no-where, and he's even knocking. This isn't entirely without precedent, but it -is- unexpected. Jean's currently in the large bathroom of the apartment, door half open to the living room and the lights around the mirror set to full intensity. A few bits of bloody and damp kleenex litter the counter around the sink, as Jean instead focuses her attention on the trace amounts of fresh blood welling from the now-cleaned splits to her lower lip, and how best to get it looking properly cosmetic again. Her first aid kit is open, but that's a lot of movement in the area for surgical glue. Hrm... She spares a thought for the front door, opening it, and a wordless greeting for Logan, a brush of her mind against his before she returns to poking and prodding. "Wish I'd been awake in Hindman's class on minimization techniques," she mutters to herself.
Logan comes in as the door opens, shifting the cheesecake from under his arm so he can offer it to Jean. "Hey, Red," he calls into the bathroom. "I brought you fatty, chocolaty indulgence. Had a hard enough day to deserve it?" The question is intended as rhetorical, but he comes over toward the bathroom, not quite having realized just what Jean's doing, half-concealed in the bathroom.
"Have I told you lately that I love you?" Jean calls back, tacitly approving of any and all donations of cheesecake as she falls silent to push her lip into proper shape and apply pressure with more kleenex, holding it there with two fingers and gently rolling her eyes at her lack of a healing factor. << Just give me about ten minutes to get myself patched up, and another twenty to let things scab, and that cheesecake's days are numbered, if you'll help. >>
"Well, I never get tired of it," Logan replies, depositing the cake on a table before he starts to frown. << 'Patched up?' >> he reflects back at her, a definite sense of concern growing. << Sounds like a worse day than I expected. Did your mutant mice gang up on you? >> He refrains from intruding on Jean's cosmetic efforts and goes to steal one of her beers, giving him something to focus on other than Jean's condition.
<< No, no, >> Jean replies, her own mind tired and streaked with occasional mild twinges of 'ouch', but far from worried. << Just had Shaw come bursting into my office, pissed off at me for jeopardizing plans for me he hadn't bothered to tell me about. Oh, and incidentally figuring out that I was spying on his company. Cracked me across the face a couple times, but it got sorted out. >> She emerges from the bathroom at that, fingers still pinching the folded kleenex in place, and the dampness of freshly-applied tincture of arnica painted across the slight bruising on her cheeks. << Looks worse than it is. >>
A burning red surge of rage bursts in Logan's mind, obscuring the rocky landscape of his pockmarked psyche. << I'm going to kill him >> flashes with certainty across his mind, not deliberately broadcast but probably difficult to miss. If Shaw were standing in front of Logan at that moment, he would be perforated. The barest fraction of a second later, << No, I'm not going to kill him >> cuts off the first thought with equal certainty, and his mind clamps down on the rage. It is still there, but carefully contained. He puts a hand to his head. "Shit, sorry," he says, holding on to his forehead. "Shit. You're okay?"
Just as well Logan's come to his own decision on that matter, because there's a sudden bubble of unspoken 'No, you can't' that Jean's just as happy not to have to argue about. She tamps down on it, and then cautiously peels the kleenex away from her lower lip, probing gently and deciding it is good. "I'll heal," she assures, eyes frank even if she doesn't dare let herself get away with a wry grin and letting her lip bleed again. "Not as fast as you, but I'll heal. Honestly, he was pulling the hits. More frustration than anything else. If he'd seriously tried to hurt me, I would've had him on the floor," she assures, and with a hand lifted to rest on Logan's arm there's a strange sort of promise coded into the words. "Of course," she adds on, more wryly still. "This means I'm not going to be doing any kissing for a few days. Feel free to rough him up a little for that."
Oh, how well Jean knows her Wolverine. As much as he's firm about his decision not to tear Shaw to shreds and eat his heart, there is no way he will not be going looking for Shaw to have a frank discussion, quite likely in inhumanly solid knuckle-ese. He smiles at her final comment and lifts his hands to her waist. "Thanks, I think I will," he replies, the burner under his anger turning down to a low simmer and slipping into the back of his mind, to be unearthed at a later time. "I know you'd wipe the floor with him if you wanted to. But I hate to see you hurt." And since he can't kiss Jean's bloody lip, he tilts his head up to place one tenderly on her forehead.
To be fair, while Jean can't just go beat Shaw to a pulp and then expect him to work with her all that happily afterwards, there's a certain level of satisfaction spilling forth from her back brain where the Phoenix dwells. No, certain parts of Jean weren't happy at all, standing still and allowing the blows to fall. She risks a small smile and presses two fingers to her lips and then to Logan's. "I can even tie a scarf to your arm and you can be a properly traditional avenging knight," she jokes, before letting her eyes lift to his, steady and watchful. "I can't promise that this will be the only time I'm hurt, you know," she points out quietly. "Or that you'll be able to go beat in heads every time it happens either. Let me know if you find you have to take off again."
Logan smiles wryly at Jean. "Yeah, I know," he replies, as the image of himself with a little handkerchief under his shirt flashes through his mind with a definite sense of amusement, and just a little bit of pleasure despite the overt anachromism. "I can handle this...it's just...it's the first time since I've been back in your life like this that I've run into someone who isn't Scott hurting you. I don't think I'll freak out quite so much in the future. But I've got no desire to leave you. Except to knock in a couple of Shaw's teeth, and then I want to come straight back to you to celebrate my triumph."
"I'll make sure the beer is cold then," Jean replies, and while there are still questions in her eyes, still a lingering worry over yet another Stryker-like spectre showing up and sending him running out of misguided nobility, for the moment, that assurance is enough. She ventures another tiny little smile, testing the limits of the forming scabs, and then tips her head over towards the couches. "So, now that you've made off with one of my beers, want to help me with that cheesecake?" she wonders with a partial subject change, "I've got some damn' good news that's come out of tonight, and you're one of five people in the world who gets to hear about all of it."
"Well, if you twist my arm, I might help you eat a little," Logan replies dryly. He goes and actually opens the beer he swiped earlier. "So you got something out of him? Other than him figuring out some of what you were after from him?" There is a definite greedy eagerness for news in Logan's mind which he gives full reign for the moment. It helps keep that simmering anger well contained on the back burner. He drifts for the kitchen to get some silverware for the cheesecake.
"Turns out he didn't have a clue about Wide Awake, or anything else the other high-ups in Hellfire were playing." Jean commences her minor debriefing, settling back and fashioning a small and comfortable nest of pillows on one of the banquettes, with room for two to sit. She sighs with relief at taking some of the stress off of her overworked feet, and then continues. "Basically, Emma and her crew were playing him as a patsy. I filled him in on things, and then he allowed that he'd come over all in a huff because he'd planned to make me his counterpart in their inner circle, and here I'd gone off and held that Unity March and gotten all over the papers. We decided I'd take on the job anyways. So... I'm in."
Logan cuts two generously large slices out of the cheese cake. With careful arrangement of his large hands and fingers, he manages to hold both slices and his beer. "Excellent," he replies, offering Jean her cake with a fork. "So when're you gonna be meeting the rest of his inner circle?"
"Well," Jean replies, carefully maneuvering her cake out and away without disturbing Logan's and his beer, "Part of my new job description as Black Queen -- Did I tell you they all hold ranks named after chess pieces? Pretentious as hell. -- Anyways, part of what he wants me for is to mess with Emma Frost. I was going to go in and threaten her a bit for messing with Scott's mind and making him sleep with her one last time, and then letting Warren catch them the next morning... I think it might be particularly fun to go in and do it as her new rival she knows nothing about."
Logan lifts an eyebrow at the mention of chess pieces. << Yeeeeeeah, >> goes his mental voice. Pretentious indeed. Then he settles himself in with beer and rich, flavorful goodness. "Hah. Kick her ass right back into the shape it was in before all the surgery. She slept with Scott again? What was she trying to do, fuck up a personal best number of personal lives with one, one carnal act?"
Jean snorts a blackly appreciative laugh at the frank language, and maneuvers a bite of cheesecake in for a landing. "Hell if I know," she replies. "And frankly, I don't care if her intentions were a wholly-innocent attempt to try and bask in the redeeming glow of Scott's loins because she'd seen the error of her ways, the fact that she resorted to mental messing around to do it is enough to mean she and I need to have a talk. So I guess we're both going to be celebrating, huh?"
Logan chuckles blackly and nods. "I think the opportunity to kick Emma and Shaw's asses shoulda been on our agendas for a long, long time," he replies dryly. "'Cause it sounds like /way/ too much fun."
"Even if I do think yours is probably going to be the more literal ass-kicking," Jean points out with dancing eyes, and a rapid disappearance of cheesecake. Impishly, she steals Logan's beer to take a swig to wash it down with, tilting her chin as if daring him to do something about it. More seriously, she continues that "Tweaking Emma's probably going to be one of the few high points of this next stage. I'm going to be surrounding myself with rich, powerful, selfish people who are all at least keeping an eye on how best to stab everyone in the back."
Logan gives Jean a brief don't-mess-with-a-Canadian's-beer glower, but from Jean, he will withstand many indignities that he would not endure from just any hot chick. "Thank goodness you're not a telepath, or you'd probably wind up burdened with a whole host of unwanted and unpleasant mental imagery. Oh, wait..." He does a deliberately unconvincing 'surprised realization,' putting one hand over an o shaped mouth.
"Yeah," Jean looks wry, finishing off her cheesecake in record time, and falling silent with her hand shifting to rest on Logan's thigh, squeezing lightly. "I have a feeling I'm probably going to be unloading a lot of that burden on you. Scott, well, clearly he's still got Emma's interest somehow. Warren, enough said. Storm spends most of her time fussing at me and warning me to be careful, and the Professor... well," She snorts gently and smiles carefully. Some baggage, you don't share with a father figure. "So you're the lucky bastard who gets to see me vent. Although I suspect you -enjoyed- that last sparring session..."
Logan grins, his expression broad and full of teeth with a notable edge. "Oh you know it," he replies. Then he sobers a bit. "Seriously Jean, I'm here for what you need. Unload what you need, and I'll keep my desires to rip people to shreds under control." If he's not going to kill Shaw today, he's probably not going to kill anyone without a rather compelling reason.
"And I guess I can always just displace the anger into dragging you into bed and keeping you there," Jean muses with an innocuously lifted eyebrow, forcing herself to focus on positives rather than the mouth of Hell (Or Hellfire.) that's opened up in front of her. The hand on Logan's thigh squeezes again. "And can I just say I'm very glad that Shaw doesn't seem the slightest bit interested in the idea a Black Court romance. Of course, the idea of Shaw and romance in the same sentence makes my brain hurt anyways. But it's simpler."
Logan's brain is not at all fond of the idea of a Black Court romance, especially given what he takes as Shaw's propensity for for random abusive violence. Jean, however, is much more fun to imagine in bed than Shaw. "Hey, any time you need to be kept busy for a night, gimme a call and I'll be comin' runnin'." He pauses, as a double entendre rolls through his head, then rejects it; in the order he suggested, it doesn't sound that satisfying.
No, no it doesn't. Bit messy and uncomfortable, really. Jean settles in sideways to lean up against Logan, and lifts her head to nuzzle at one ear, before there's a twingle of pain from her lip and a heartfelt "-Fucking- Shaw." as she rests her forehead on Logan's shoulder instead. "Don't suppose you figured out some way to share your healing factor?" she wonders, sounding a trifle muffled with her face still screened by t-shirt and solid warm flesh. "I think the worst part of this is that these cuts and bruises are so minor there isn't anything I can do about them but wait four days to a week for them to be gone."
"Not with anyone but Rogue, we remember how well /that/ worked," Logan replies. He arranges himself to nicely envelop Jean in his arms. His hairy cheek rests on the top of Jean's head. "Abuse is tough like that. It sneaks up on ya. Just never quite enough to get really pissed enough to need to stop things."
"I honestly don't feel abused, though," Jean points out, shifting so that she's no longer addressing Logan's armpit. (So romantic.) "I mean, I'm the one who made the call that taking a couple cracks across the face was a good tradeoff for getting to where I needed to go. I didn't cower, I didn't feel particularly threatened, and I had to pretty much refrain from assisting him out of the building via a trip through a plate glass window. I don't doubt he -does- beat up women if he feels like it," she allows, staring consideringly at a spot four feet in front of her and sneaking an arm around behind Logan as he gathers her to him. "But I don't get the vibe that he sees me as any more inferior to him than he sees the rest of the world. He wasn't bullshitting when he said he wanted an equal partner. And I wouldn't have taken that offer as anything less, and he knows it. So," she sums up. "I think he needs a good smacking, sure, but because he's a nasty bastard with a nastier temper, not because he's making me feel powerless and afraid."
Logan is not entirely convinced by Jean's arguments, but he does seem somewhat mollified, not least because Jean is willing to discuss it. "Well, I also owe him a slug for Alyssa, too, so he's definitely going to feel the burn before we're done. If he's gonna make you his equal, though, bear in mind that you'll have a damned good excuse not to take any more of that quality of shit any more, okay? And you'll have plenty of reason to put him back in his place."
"As I fully intend to, and told him myself," Jean agrees, the hand wrapped around Logan rising to let her run her fingers soothingly through his hair. Whether she's soothing herself, him, or the both of them is up to interpretation. "This was an incident I intend to have remain an isolated one, and if he hits me again, he takes a nap. I don't think I can change him, I don't give a damn' about changing him, in fact, and I certainly don't think he's just misinderstood. I'm not in love with him, I don't admire him, and..." She trails off and drums her fingers against the crown of the Wolverine's mighty 'do. "Am I missing any of the other lies abused women tell themselves? Oh, and I know perfectly well this isn't my fault for making him mad. There." She leans in, and while she remembers in time that she can't punctuate herself with a proper kiss, she does manage to deliver a light and gentle one without incident.
Logan is gentle with the return of the kiss. "Well, I guess a telepath /ought/ to be fairly self aware," he replies dryly. "All right, I won't worry about your mental state. I'll just worry about how pissed Shaw is gonna be when I finish with him." He shifts in his seat and settles against her more firmly. "So. You gonna be free to go looking for trouble some time soon? So you can share a little bit in the cathartic violence?"
Jean sniffs gently, and opines that "Frankly, I think you can place your worries on better faces than his," before a little smile creeps across her features. "Oh yeah," she agrees. "I think as soon as the lip's healed up, in fact. Tomorrow is the cathartic cattiness of messing with Emma, bright and early, but I'm sure I'll be amassing a lot of wonderful frustrations with no Danger Room to bleed them off in. The word down at Lennox Hill is that someone's shipping White China through the heroin dealers, and they've seen a huge spike in ODs coming through as a result. There are some very tired and frustrated ER docs who'd like to see that stop."
Logan shakes his head sadly. "Seriously. Why the hell does someone want to sell shit that's /too/ /pure/? Stupid ass druggies. Be nice to kick 'em into next week." One more ass to add to Logan's list of kickables. Or a class of asses, perhaps. "I want full details about Emma's come uppance. I'll tell you all about Shaw; might take me a little while to catch up with him."
"Market dynamics," Jean replies, even if the question is a rhetorical one. "Flood the streets with too much heroin, the price per gram drops. Keep it at a high purity, you keep the price high, and if you start killing people because they take too much not knowing, well, there will always be others, now won't there?" There's a hard look in her eyes, for Jean has done her shifts in the ER too, and has seen the ODs wheeled in. She shakes her head to clear it, and then finds her little smile again. "I'm planning to be at the Hellfire Clubhouse for 9:30. If you don't have to head right back to the school, you could maybe spend the night and I could be back to tell you over brunch and coffee?"
Logan mmmms and smiles with that particular wolfish quality that seems to either frighten women off or have them catchimg their breath. "Oh, you know how to hold a man in your thrall," he says, a gleam in his eye. "Nice not to have to wait to hear about the chaos you're gonna unleash right in Emma's kitchen."
"I thirst for chaos," Jean intones solemnly, before the wolfish quality of the smile neatly separates Jean into the category of catching her breath. Mmmm indeed. She leans in to give him another highly-careful kiss, and then rises to collect the cake plates and saunter for the kitchen area and the bedroom door beyond it. "See you in bed, then," she invites. "I've got a nice early morning of mild social mayhem ahead of me."
Logan goes to put the remainder of the cheesecake in the refrigerator. "I won't keep you waiting long," he promises. "Sounds like better day than the one I'm declaring ended just before I arrived."
"I like the way you think, mister," replies a Jean growing rapidly more pleased with life by the minute, and with a sway to her hips as she slips in behind Logan to drape her arms over his shoulders before finishing the saunter through the bedroom door and out of sight. Cheesecake, mild cuddling and promises of violence and retribution on her behalf: what more could a girl want?