8/1/06 - Jean
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< NYC > New York Police Department - Mutant Affairs
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
Click-clack, click-clack, but Jean Grey is -not- wearing stiletto heels today. No, today features black leather boots that reach to mid calf, despite the heat, the stiff support of her ankle they lend well worth dealing with the two inch heels. Stacked ones, not the evil that is the stiletto. Jeans overtop of them, a t-shirt featuring a caffeine molecule paired with a neat jacket to try and pull off professional, she twiddles idly at a strand of hair as she heads deeper into the Mutant Affairs offices instead of out, attache case in one hand. Rossi's doorway beckons, and therefore soon features a tall redhead peeking around it. "Rossi? Up for random interruptions?"
Surely no random than the baseball currently being tossed up and caught by a scarred hand, accompaniment to the tail end of wildly criminal speculation. "--jacked his will, not to mention his mistress," Rossi tells his partner from over the bridge of his legs, stretched long and crossed at the ankles on the edge of his desk. Green eyes and brown eyes cut to the doorway, both warming to welcome at recognition. Beston lifts a hand. Chris lifts his voice. "Doc. Hey. C'mon in. What brings you to our neck of the woods?"
In answer, Jean lifts her attache case, obediant black leather, bulging importantly at the sides. "Powerpoint presentation for a gaggle of coroners," she explains. "Special Considerations In Autopsy of Suspected H. Sapiens Superior. I got to use the Sabella Miller case for fun pictures." She enters as she talks, headed for the desk and finding a corner of it to claim for her own, one hip hitched easily.
Brown eyes twinkle in sad, hounddog features; Beston makes way for Jean, offering her his chair with a murmured word about talking to Tucci. More expansive (if less physical) Rossi waves an inviting hand to his partner's sacrifice. "Sit down," he suggests. "Make yourself comfortable. Let down your hair. Hell, let down anything else you want. Shirt, bra, skirt -- we're all guys here. We won't mind."
"He's been impossible for days," John tells Dr. Grey, gravel bass resigned. "Can't decide whether to shoot him or shoot him."
"NYPD consultants gone wild," Jean muses, before giving John a bright little smile and taking the offered chair with a crossing of her legs and a sigh of "Ah, good to get off that ankle. Forget about mutants, it's stiletto heels that are a menace to society... and I think I might have a clue to the impossible, John." she offers, giving Rossi a glance and a smirk, before turning back to cheerfully talking over his head to his partner about him. "Of course, you might have the same clue, unless he's been keeping secrets."
Beston cuts a wry look across at his partner, whose sharp white smile -- sans blush, though the mind wrestles with embarrassment -- serves as answer enough. "Chris and women," he says: wisdom from the mount. The slouched frame ambles away.
"Stop reading my mind," Rossi tells Jean, squinting across the joined desks without heat. The baseball, tossed again, lands with a smack into the waiting hand and bobs like a weight under his pointing finger. "Not kosher, Doc. For all you know, I could've just had a really good bagel this morning."
"My synaptic pathways are staying completely on their own side of the fence, Rossi," Jean bats back, mustering up an injured sniff for proper effect and hitching up one leg to rest across the opposite knee, the better to unzip the boot confining it and prod judiciously at an ankle wrapped in obnoxiously purple tensor tape. "Such a horrible opinion of me... of course it doesn't seem to spill over to my best friends any." She pauses. She grins.
Best friends. Eyebrows arch -- "You guys have friendship bracelets?" Rossi asks, cynicism steel-bright in the drawling voice. "Matching necklaces, share outfits, the whole bit?" -- while speculation (embarrassment) squirms cheerfully behind the eyes. His gaze skips past Jean towards the door, unconsciously hopeful, before refocusing on his visitor. "Let me guess. Girl talk?"
"Got it in one," says Jean, sacrificing the boot entirely and latting it hit the floor with a hollow thump, collapsed and bereft of the fulfilment of a foot. "Although -she- swears she was only turning up to get the I told you so's out of the way. Quite a mouth on you, Chris Rossi," she concludes, with the sort of open-ended interest that reminds that Ororo Monroe's best friends with a telepath.
"I swear a lot," Rossi says, a statement of the obvious that comes complete with its own dismissive wave of hand. "Munroe knows i--" Willful misunderstanding stutters against belated realization. Black brows lower; feet thump down with his lean forward, suspicion brilliant in the pale eyes. "The hell? You didn't. She didn't."
"Best friends, Rossi," says Jean to her ankle, rolling it around and keeping her face serene and her tone teasing as she delivers a little white lie. "Girl talk. Don't worry, though, we don't -want- to know the details. And I'm pretty sure Logan would get weirded out if I was sharing."
The rapidly closing shutters on Rossi's expression seal tight, reassurance aside, and caution dampens earlier smugness to a faint whisper, hedging it around with wariness. "Right," he says, planting his elbows on the desktop. "Logan. The bunch of you grew up together? You and her and Summers and--" Hands flap over the bump of the dropped ball, miming cherub wings. Flippity-flappity. "Featherhead."
"Ororo and I were the first," Jean reflects. "-Warren-," she corrects dryly, "Turned up a couple months after she did. Scott... showed up the year I graduated. Baby of the bunch," she pronounces, trying to draw Rossi back out of his shell he's scuttled into and is now waving little hermit crab legs out of. The ace bandage is peeled off her ankle, revealing red puffy swelling and general unhappiness about being walked on for several hours. Further explanations follow, but only after a cautious look at the door and the level of traffic and noise beyond. "Logan, we tripped over him back in 2000. The Brotherhood wanted to kidnap Rogue for the Liberty Island incident, and he happened to be there when they send Victor Creed to fetch her. Got knocked out in the process, Scott and Ororo brought him home, and our first meeting involved him waking up as I poked him with a needle and freaking out accordingly."
The detective blinks, gaze drifting towards the swollen foot before dropping altogether: a frowning speculation on a number 2 pencil, plucked up and spun between two fingers. "You guys got a habit for picking up strays," he observes. "That Chuck's usual MO? You and Logan and Cadbury--" A dispassionately listed tally of names, the rough baritone giving equal weight to each, without prejudice.
"Technically, Ororo's the only stray of the first students." Jean corrects, peering at Rossi sidelong, "My parents contacted Charles, and Logan stayed for Liberty Island, then took off again. And do you keep any ice around?"
"Break room," Rossi supplies with another, passing glance at Jean before pushing off to stand. A drawer scrapes open to claim ownership of the baseball; in its stead, the detective pulls out a plastic heating pack, flaccid in the absence of content. "I'll be right back. Don't touch anything."
Jean , of course, promptly leeeeans over in her seat to touch her thumb to the very center of Rossi's desk, as soon that earnest, scarred back heads out the door. She then settles back to wait, idly focusing telekinetic awareness on the swelling to see what it feels like. Mutation: the ultimate fidget.
He is back in short order, cajoled into a slightly better mood by friendly mockery passed in the hallway: Yamaguchi's voice, a dry baritone that pursues him into the squad room. The heating bag is pregnant to bursting, blue rubber straining over the distension of ice cubes. "Here," Rossi says, tossing its weight at Jean's lap. "What'd you do to your leg, anyway?"
"Thanks," An inglorious grab manages to stop the ice before it meets her lap, and Jean soon presses the ace bandage into wrapping around the bag, cold and poky, to hold it in place around her ankle. The skin promptly gets all the more red and flushed, but Jean's posture eases as the pain fades out. "And like I said earlier, stiletto heels are the real menace to modern American society. You'll laugh if I tell you what happened, though," she predicts, pointing an accusatory finger.
"I never laugh," Rossi says as he slumps back into his chair: a lie by strict terms, if not far from the truth. "You should hear the shit I hear during a day's work. Who's laughing?" Once more the ankles cross, legs tilted up to prop on the edge of the desk. Leaned back in the rickety chair, hands loosely laced across his stomach, the detective eyes Jean across the tables with a mild and innocuous curiosity.
"Detective Lazarro got nervous when I dropped in on him last week and had us go for a walk," Jean assigns blame with good will and cheer, and a careful rearrangement of the bag of ice as it pokes painfully at her ankle bone. "Unfortunately, you can't walk in stiletto heels on a Manhattan sidewalk. Nearly landed on him once, and then when he took off and I kept walking, I--" The last part is practically inaudible, but an ear used to muttered confessions might pick out something like "tripped over a Pomeranian."
"Vicious little fuckers, Pomeranians," Rossi says with -- look! -- perfect gravity. A hairline fracture spiders across the clamped secrecy of his mind, nonetheless. Funny. He does not smile.
"And then its owner, who is somewhere around 90 and could terrify -Magneto-, started yelling at me," Jean concludes mournfully. "She recognized me from TV and started shouting about acts of mutant violence, and where were my principles -now-?. It -bit- me," she defends.
Green eyes are shiny. But still: they do not laugh. "They do that," Rossi allows. "Bite people. Go figure. You get shots?"
"Yes," Jean is grumpy now, well aware that she, most powerful telekinetic force on the planet, has been lain low by a conspiracy between a yap dog and an unfortunate choice of shoes. "The old woman refused to cough up any vaccination records, and cordially suggested I could die. So, rabies. I hate needles," says the doctor, hypocritically.
"Sounds like you're in the wrong field, in that case," Rossi suggests with cordial malice, lashes fanning black across his eyes. "Sort of like a cop hating guns, isn't it?"
"More like a cop knows how to use guns, so they aren't that comfortable trusting other people to use them on them." Jean pauses, and considers the example, before shaking her head. "No... that doesn't quite stretch that far. Anyways, so my best friend wants to date a cop," she changes the subject ruthlessly back to what first sent her stopping, and sits up in the borrowed chair. "Think I should be afraid, or should I offer congratulations?"
Rossi's mouth fishhooks crookedly, skimming across the slant of a grin: retreat of a different sort, attention watchful behind the humorous eyes. "You tell me," he suggests. The broad frame rocks lazily in the chair. "It's not like I've had a whole lot of luck with women." << --staying alive, >> whispers the thought, treacherously finishing where the tongue does not.
"I'm leaning towards congratulations, myself," says Jean. There's silence after that, the whisper of half-overheard thought enough to convince her to leave it at that, and to tip her chin downwards as she says it.
"Congratulations for me? Or for her?" Rossi asks, tipping his head towards Jean. Real amusement winds its way around deprecation; the curve of his mouth softens. Unprompted, he volunteers the understated tribute: "She's something else."
"For both, maybe. You're a step up from her last boyfriend," Jean points out, tipping her head sideways this time, and letting a grin of her own peek at him, before she, too turns her attention to the charms of one divine Ms. Monroe. "Something special," she agrees.
The detective rocks again. "Forge," he supplies, the name quirking up at the end in question.
"The mad engineer himself," Jean confirms. "See, you at least come with all your original parts. And don't go around shooting people and stuffing them in closets."
"He gonna come and try to stuff me in a closet again?"
"No, I gave him a lecture on Why We Don't Shoot People And Stuff Them In Closets," Jean promises, before her expression goes vague and distant. "Of course, he'll probably just start doing something else. I swear, we mostly keep him on faculty because otherwise he'll end up wandering around New York City, building neutron bombs out of coffee spoons because someone said it was impossible. You might have Logan turn up on your doorstep, though," she warns, attention returning with a strange twinkle in her eye.
Rossi stiffens slightly; the black head cants, baring the pulse that skips in the shadow of his jaw. "Yeah?" he says. And, "Logan dated Munroe, too? Shit. If beating off her past boyfriends is the worst of it, I'm armed and golden."
"No, no... -God-, no. We share nail polish and the occasional margarita mix, not boyfriends." Jean's nose crinkles at the notion of being caught with some of Storm's exes on her arm, better than the initial immediate spark of possessive jealousy that passed through her eyes at the idea of sharing the Wolverine with anyone. But then her mind's eye is caught by an image of Logan with painted claws, and the image leaks slightly, thank you intersecting trains of thought. She glances down at the bare toes of the sprained ankle, still sparkling with dark blue glitter and cheer. "If he shows up, it's because he wants to go mess with Jareth a little bit and thinks you might be interested."
"No offense to whatever whacked out yardstick you use to hire your faculty," Rossi drags out, remembered animosity acrid on the hard swells of accent, "but it doesn't take two of us to kick Tarrant's ass. It barely takes half of one of us. I don't get why you let him stick around, teaching at your school."
Irritation leaps in Jean's eyes and hardens her expression, directed off somewhere to the north, where Jareth Tarrant and Alyssa Carter go about their daily lives. "The only reason he still has his job is because I can confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea never entered his head until two weeks ago, when Alyssa put it there," she states, voice low and her shoulders bristling. "Docked pay, probation, letter in his file, apology to the school -- because she graduated, because he's sorry about it, there's not a fucking thing else I can do, under the rules. And if they continue doing it when she's moved out... then it's out of my hands there, too. I'd kick something," she concludes, "If I didn't have a bum ankle. Where's that trashcan my Dad blew up? Still around?"
A muscle leaps under the stretch of Rossi's jaw. "Don't blow up my station," he says as a matter of course, and sinks down in the chair to drop his chin onto his chest, baritone hollowing into aggrieved timbres. "For all you guys are a school and all, you sort of specialize in the morons, don't you? What's the problem? Genes your only criteria for acceptance?"
"I think it's not so much morons as the gene amplifies any moron genes that might be present, along with the ones related to mutation," Jean sighs. She does not, however, do anything to Rossi's trashcan besides stare at it. "So you take the baseline level of human idiots in a population, but our idiocies are just so much flashier. Alyssa as a non-mutant would probably screw the captain of the football team. And Jareth would get seduced by a sorority girl and end up with the clap."
"Lucky you," Rossi says, laconic on the subject of mutation and intelligence. Cadbury, murmurs a private hint of self-satisfied complacency, is neither nincompoop nor drama queen. "So they're together. That why she moved out? Because of the whole--" He gestures. Eloquently. (Obscenely.)
"We're moving all the graduates out," Jean gives the fuller answer first, smirking wry appreciation at Italian physical eloquence. Her forehead finds the palm of one hand, massaging gently at her temples. "A few have hung around for a year already, and while I can understand wanting some time to figure yourself out, it's time for the little chickens to fly. -Alyssa- felt the need to inform the entire table that this meant she could keep having sex with Jareth, when the idea occurred to her."
The idle creak of chair squeaks to a stop. Rossi's eyebrows lift, shoulders straightening against the backdrop of filing cabinets and tape. "All of them?" he echoes, deep voice unstrung by surprise. Feet slam down again. "Even the -- what's her name. Rogue?"
"Rogue and Jubilee will be renting my flat in Greenwich from me," Jean replies, looking up from where face has met palm with a sudden flicker of unholy amusement in her eyes. "You look shocked. I promise, most of them are -not- Alyssa Carter."
The sweep of Rossi's hand dismisses Alyssa: less urgent, less critical than the prospect of Jubilee and Rogue unleashed on New York City. "Those two got their powers under control? I mean, Jubilee--" Memory reels backward, fishing that irrepressible nurse out of the dark, boredom-plagued seclusion at Xavier School. "Forget Jubilee. Rogue. She's dangerous."
"Rogue wears full length gloves morning and night," Jean recounts, giving Rossi a suddenly sharp look, eyes narrowed and hard and jaw set. "She takes them off only when absolutely necessary, like bathing and so on. She will never be able to control her power. She will never be able to touch anyone. She's spent the last six years first finding ways to live around other people, and then coming to terms with what those ways have done to her life. Pick another target, detective."
"All the time?" Rossi echoes, ignoring warning signs with an impatience sketched by the lift of chin and jerked hand. "Seems to me she had no problems taking those gloves off, at least once that I met her. She going to be okay out in the real world?" Sharp-focused in the detective's mind sings the corollary question: is the real world going to be okay with Rogue in it?
"You've got a funny set of standards there, Detective," Jean replies, the familiar 'Rossi' flitted clean away, and the irritation continuing to roil and build. Motions even, she begins to unwrap the ice pack, the purple bandage looping around and around again as she focuses on it. "Fortunately, whether or not the students head out into the world isn't resting on your verdict of whether they're ready for it. Here I thought you'd be happy that we're sending them off to live their own lives, instead of attracting strays."
The glitter of eyes is sardonic; the cast of clipped words is biting. "It's my fucking job to worry about this shit," Rossi points out, his own irritation swift to blacken his mood afresh. "Sending them out into the world's all well and good, until MA gets called out on their asses because someone's collapsed after patting Rogue's ass, or Jubilee's sense of humor sets off the Fourth of July in some poor shit's toilet."
"So what's the solution, detective? Keep them all out of your hair up in Westchester until we're sure they're all rational adults?" Jean turns the irritation back on Rossi, and plops the ice bag on a bare corner of his desk with a flick of the wrist and no telekinesis. She turns again to her ankle, and the rebandaging thereof. "Or maybe I should go in, do a little Pavlovian conditioning, telepath style. Lock Alyssa in a chastity belt, maybe--?" There's a brief pause, Jean's riposte interrupted as she focuses on this idea for a moment. Eventually, she concludes that "For better or worse, we've given them four or five or even six years of coaching, lecturing, drilling, practice, therapy, training and education. If they haven't learned from it, then it's their own damn' fault if they end up in jail."
"You can /warn/ us," Rossi says with scalding acrimony, his hand slapping onto the desktop to puff air under innocent papers nearby. They curl, jumping up in surprise before settling reluctantly again, askew, akilter. "Half the guys in MA spend a hell of a lot of time turning a blind eye where they can, and now you're just sprinkling your kids out into the general population without giving us a word to the wise. Fan-/fucking/-tastic."
Jean's answer to that is a Look. It's of the sort that suggests she can't quite find a response capable of the boot to the head she'd like to administer. She then resumes wrapping up her ankle, in lieu of the leavetaking she'd very much like, right about now.
The pencil, reclaimed, is tossed as soon as it is picked up into a clattering roll across files and desk. Rossi jerks himself up to stand, chair bumped back to ricochet violence against the cabinet; hands thrust in pockets, he stalks off. So much for farewell. So much for grace. So much for good mood and equanimity.
Beston, bumped in passing, peers with sorrowful brown eyes at Jean as he approaches. "Coffee?"
"Please," Jean sighs. She is still trying to wrap her ankle.
"Black?"
"Like the space between your partner's ears."
"Hard to read," Beston says without so much as an hint of irony, and pauses by the small table that serves as coffee dispenser and meeting space. The pot is half-full and still heated, though dated from what brewing only inside knowledge could say. "At least he's not humming anymore. I can't take the humming."
"I'm just glad it's Ororo planning on dating him," says Jean, one hand held to receive, unquestioning, the gift from the coffee gods. "And not me."
The mug is chipped and green, and sports the NYPD logo. Beston looks up from pouring, one eye for the pot, the other eye for Jean, and wonders aloud, "Ororo? There's a name. Usually he dates Ashleys and Brittanys and Ambers." A pause; he replaces the pot and threads a plastic stirrer into the corner of his mouth. "Leahs."
"Generally referred to as 'Munroe'. Poodle second in command," Jean reveals with a frank half-smile, tracing a fingertip against the logo, before the heat bleeding through the ceramic sends her quickly back to holding it properly. "My best friend since I was thirteen. I think he'll be good for her, but..." Trailing off, Jean takes a long and careful slurp of second-rate coffee, and catches Beston's eye with her own. "Does he seriously look at mutants and just see future case #45361? I think he'll be good for her, but not if he forgets she's a person, or that her friends and students are."
"He looks at everyone and sees future case #456-- whatever it was," Beston concedes, rounding the desks to take up Rossi's still-revolving seat. His own mug is blue: pastel, with a row of little ducks happily marching around its belly. "Then again, so do I. If you've been in this business long enough, you can't help it. If it makes you feel any better, I don't think it has anything to do with whether they're /mutants/ or not."
"He was pissed because our graduates, plus a few hangers-on from last year, are being shuffled off to move out," Jean recounts, eyes on Beston, grave old sounding board, first, and then on his ducks. Quack. Her finger taps the NYPD logo again, nerves overloaded from the first attempt and less sensitive on the second. "And that we didn't bother to let MA know in advance about that. You don't get pissed if a private school -without- mutants did that."
A hand massages the nape of that slouched neck, broad, spatulate fingers rubbing tension out of aging muscles. Beston looks apologetic. "Well, but apples and oranges, isn't it? I mean, a private school without mutants probably won't have a student that could blow up New York City if he sneezed. Chris is a worrier. Like an old woman, really." The rasping, Midwestern voice plods slowly and kindly through the sway of words. "He worries about your kids."
"And I'm worried about my best friend," Jean replies, expression pensive. "But if this is just... Chris being Chris, then--" She shrugs. There's no good answer to the question, and so, with an effortful gesture, she lets it drop. "I guess it's not uncommon for a minority group to fancy themselves discriminated at at the drop of a hat. And there aren't many minority groups out there with people giving so much good reason to be suspicious, thank-you-Magneto. I'll try and dial back on the protective friend response."
A briefly sheepish expression crosses Beston's face; the quiet, orderly mind relaxes in simultaneous realization, tension bled out of the hunch of shoulders. "You and me both," he says with grave bemusement, dark eyes twinkling. "So this friend of yours, the one you're feeling protective about. I met her a few times in passing, during that whole thing with Miller. What's she like?"
Jean finds the tension bandage much easier to wrap this time, moving swiftly now that she's no longer hurrying. The boot is put back on, zipped supportingly into place, and she picks up the coffee mug again, left hovering for a brief second in habit before it had kissed the desk. "Ororo Munroe," she rolls the name over her tongue, a smile creeping to her face again. "Well, she's confident, competant, can fly an SR-71 Blackbird upside down in a hurricane, loves margaritas, good-quality leather, her garden, and life in general. She's been through the fire, and she still manages to deal with it better than I ever do."
Beston digests this in silence, sliding each new description into methodical order with the last, weighing the summation against the entirety of Rossi. "Sounds like Chris's kind of woman," he says at last, the words cordial though troubled fingers stir ripples across equanimity. "It's been long enough since Leah, I guess. He hasn't had a lot of luck with women staying alive." An unconscious echo of Rossi's thought, spoken aloud with a mild look at Jean.
"I wouldn't worry about that," Jean predicts, and on this she is comfortable, shoulders relaxing and falling back as she leans into the chair and cradles the coffee, one toe nudging at the patient attache case and laptop within. "Not with Ororo. But... -has- it been long enough, since Leah?" Concern drives the prying, and Jean settles her eyes firmly on Beston's, letting him see what's behind the question, one best friend to one partner.
The other cop sinks his weight into his elbows, face blank, a murmur of uncertainty rustling in the forebrain. "You should ask him," Beston says, bass coasting into belated blandness. Cops do not talk about their partners. "He's a big boy. He can take care of himself. I mean, if Munroe's going to drop lightning bolts on his head, maybe not, but the other stuff--"
"I doubt I should go asking him anything for a while," Jean admits, setting down the coffee mug and giving Beston a wry smile as she carefully gets up to her feet again. "But if you're sure..."
"You know Chris." Does she? The easy reply is almost -- almost! -- a question. Beston straightens with her, standing in an old-school courtesy as timeworn as the shabby suit. "He cools down about as fast as he gets hot under the collar. He doesn't hold a grudge." Honestly tacks on, a wry second later, "--often."
"No wonder we spark at each other so often," Jean admits, shaking her head with a short laugh that accepts that as a summary of herself as well. "Italian boy and a redhead, not the smoothest sailing, but the squalls do blow over quick. I'll see you around, John. And I'll send Ororo your way some time. I think you'll like her."
Beston's slow smile in a revelation on that sad face, a gentle warmth that gives his homely features a neighborly, disarming charm. "I like everybody," he tells Jean, hands slipping into pockets. "If Chris and you like her, what's not to love? I'll be seeing you, Doc. Take care of that foot."
"Doctor, heal thyself. I always do," Jean promises Beston, taking attache case in hand and lightly brushing his arm as she passes out and into the hall. The fact that it's often one Ororo Munroe that helps see to it that Jean does... well, that's a secret that will keep. "Hey, Ken," she greets, out of sight but not out of earshot yet, and the smooth alto voice mixes with that of the men and women and general noise of the precinct until Jean is gone.
[Log ends]
Jean drops by to talk to Rossi at the precinct. She spills the girl talk beans. Rossi goes grar. Jean goes rawr. Beston goes sheesh, and they all fall down.
< NYC > New York Police Department - Mutant Affairs
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
Click-clack, click-clack, but Jean Grey is -not- wearing stiletto heels today. No, today features black leather boots that reach to mid calf, despite the heat, the stiff support of her ankle they lend well worth dealing with the two inch heels. Stacked ones, not the evil that is the stiletto. Jeans overtop of them, a t-shirt featuring a caffeine molecule paired with a neat jacket to try and pull off professional, she twiddles idly at a strand of hair as she heads deeper into the Mutant Affairs offices instead of out, attache case in one hand. Rossi's doorway beckons, and therefore soon features a tall redhead peeking around it. "Rossi? Up for random interruptions?"
Surely no random than the baseball currently being tossed up and caught by a scarred hand, accompaniment to the tail end of wildly criminal speculation. "--jacked his will, not to mention his mistress," Rossi tells his partner from over the bridge of his legs, stretched long and crossed at the ankles on the edge of his desk. Green eyes and brown eyes cut to the doorway, both warming to welcome at recognition. Beston lifts a hand. Chris lifts his voice. "Doc. Hey. C'mon in. What brings you to our neck of the woods?"
In answer, Jean lifts her attache case, obediant black leather, bulging importantly at the sides. "Powerpoint presentation for a gaggle of coroners," she explains. "Special Considerations In Autopsy of Suspected H. Sapiens Superior. I got to use the Sabella Miller case for fun pictures." She enters as she talks, headed for the desk and finding a corner of it to claim for her own, one hip hitched easily.
Brown eyes twinkle in sad, hounddog features; Beston makes way for Jean, offering her his chair with a murmured word about talking to Tucci. More expansive (if less physical) Rossi waves an inviting hand to his partner's sacrifice. "Sit down," he suggests. "Make yourself comfortable. Let down your hair. Hell, let down anything else you want. Shirt, bra, skirt -- we're all guys here. We won't mind."
"He's been impossible for days," John tells Dr. Grey, gravel bass resigned. "Can't decide whether to shoot him or shoot him."
"NYPD consultants gone wild," Jean muses, before giving John a bright little smile and taking the offered chair with a crossing of her legs and a sigh of "Ah, good to get off that ankle. Forget about mutants, it's stiletto heels that are a menace to society... and I think I might have a clue to the impossible, John." she offers, giving Rossi a glance and a smirk, before turning back to cheerfully talking over his head to his partner about him. "Of course, you might have the same clue, unless he's been keeping secrets."
Beston cuts a wry look across at his partner, whose sharp white smile -- sans blush, though the mind wrestles with embarrassment -- serves as answer enough. "Chris and women," he says: wisdom from the mount. The slouched frame ambles away.
"Stop reading my mind," Rossi tells Jean, squinting across the joined desks without heat. The baseball, tossed again, lands with a smack into the waiting hand and bobs like a weight under his pointing finger. "Not kosher, Doc. For all you know, I could've just had a really good bagel this morning."
"My synaptic pathways are staying completely on their own side of the fence, Rossi," Jean bats back, mustering up an injured sniff for proper effect and hitching up one leg to rest across the opposite knee, the better to unzip the boot confining it and prod judiciously at an ankle wrapped in obnoxiously purple tensor tape. "Such a horrible opinion of me... of course it doesn't seem to spill over to my best friends any." She pauses. She grins.
Best friends. Eyebrows arch -- "You guys have friendship bracelets?" Rossi asks, cynicism steel-bright in the drawling voice. "Matching necklaces, share outfits, the whole bit?" -- while speculation (embarrassment) squirms cheerfully behind the eyes. His gaze skips past Jean towards the door, unconsciously hopeful, before refocusing on his visitor. "Let me guess. Girl talk?"
"Got it in one," says Jean, sacrificing the boot entirely and latting it hit the floor with a hollow thump, collapsed and bereft of the fulfilment of a foot. "Although -she- swears she was only turning up to get the I told you so's out of the way. Quite a mouth on you, Chris Rossi," she concludes, with the sort of open-ended interest that reminds that Ororo Monroe's best friends with a telepath.
"I swear a lot," Rossi says, a statement of the obvious that comes complete with its own dismissive wave of hand. "Munroe knows i--" Willful misunderstanding stutters against belated realization. Black brows lower; feet thump down with his lean forward, suspicion brilliant in the pale eyes. "The hell? You didn't. She didn't."
"Best friends, Rossi," says Jean to her ankle, rolling it around and keeping her face serene and her tone teasing as she delivers a little white lie. "Girl talk. Don't worry, though, we don't -want- to know the details. And I'm pretty sure Logan would get weirded out if I was sharing."
The rapidly closing shutters on Rossi's expression seal tight, reassurance aside, and caution dampens earlier smugness to a faint whisper, hedging it around with wariness. "Right," he says, planting his elbows on the desktop. "Logan. The bunch of you grew up together? You and her and Summers and--" Hands flap over the bump of the dropped ball, miming cherub wings. Flippity-flappity. "Featherhead."
"Ororo and I were the first," Jean reflects. "-Warren-," she corrects dryly, "Turned up a couple months after she did. Scott... showed up the year I graduated. Baby of the bunch," she pronounces, trying to draw Rossi back out of his shell he's scuttled into and is now waving little hermit crab legs out of. The ace bandage is peeled off her ankle, revealing red puffy swelling and general unhappiness about being walked on for several hours. Further explanations follow, but only after a cautious look at the door and the level of traffic and noise beyond. "Logan, we tripped over him back in 2000. The Brotherhood wanted to kidnap Rogue for the Liberty Island incident, and he happened to be there when they send Victor Creed to fetch her. Got knocked out in the process, Scott and Ororo brought him home, and our first meeting involved him waking up as I poked him with a needle and freaking out accordingly."
The detective blinks, gaze drifting towards the swollen foot before dropping altogether: a frowning speculation on a number 2 pencil, plucked up and spun between two fingers. "You guys got a habit for picking up strays," he observes. "That Chuck's usual MO? You and Logan and Cadbury--" A dispassionately listed tally of names, the rough baritone giving equal weight to each, without prejudice.
"Technically, Ororo's the only stray of the first students." Jean corrects, peering at Rossi sidelong, "My parents contacted Charles, and Logan stayed for Liberty Island, then took off again. And do you keep any ice around?"
"Break room," Rossi supplies with another, passing glance at Jean before pushing off to stand. A drawer scrapes open to claim ownership of the baseball; in its stead, the detective pulls out a plastic heating pack, flaccid in the absence of content. "I'll be right back. Don't touch anything."
Jean , of course, promptly leeeeans over in her seat to touch her thumb to the very center of Rossi's desk, as soon that earnest, scarred back heads out the door. She then settles back to wait, idly focusing telekinetic awareness on the swelling to see what it feels like. Mutation: the ultimate fidget.
He is back in short order, cajoled into a slightly better mood by friendly mockery passed in the hallway: Yamaguchi's voice, a dry baritone that pursues him into the squad room. The heating bag is pregnant to bursting, blue rubber straining over the distension of ice cubes. "Here," Rossi says, tossing its weight at Jean's lap. "What'd you do to your leg, anyway?"
"Thanks," An inglorious grab manages to stop the ice before it meets her lap, and Jean soon presses the ace bandage into wrapping around the bag, cold and poky, to hold it in place around her ankle. The skin promptly gets all the more red and flushed, but Jean's posture eases as the pain fades out. "And like I said earlier, stiletto heels are the real menace to modern American society. You'll laugh if I tell you what happened, though," she predicts, pointing an accusatory finger.
"I never laugh," Rossi says as he slumps back into his chair: a lie by strict terms, if not far from the truth. "You should hear the shit I hear during a day's work. Who's laughing?" Once more the ankles cross, legs tilted up to prop on the edge of the desk. Leaned back in the rickety chair, hands loosely laced across his stomach, the detective eyes Jean across the tables with a mild and innocuous curiosity.
"Detective Lazarro got nervous when I dropped in on him last week and had us go for a walk," Jean assigns blame with good will and cheer, and a careful rearrangement of the bag of ice as it pokes painfully at her ankle bone. "Unfortunately, you can't walk in stiletto heels on a Manhattan sidewalk. Nearly landed on him once, and then when he took off and I kept walking, I--" The last part is practically inaudible, but an ear used to muttered confessions might pick out something like "tripped over a Pomeranian."
"Vicious little fuckers, Pomeranians," Rossi says with -- look! -- perfect gravity. A hairline fracture spiders across the clamped secrecy of his mind, nonetheless. Funny. He does not smile.
"And then its owner, who is somewhere around 90 and could terrify -Magneto-, started yelling at me," Jean concludes mournfully. "She recognized me from TV and started shouting about acts of mutant violence, and where were my principles -now-?. It -bit- me," she defends.
Green eyes are shiny. But still: they do not laugh. "They do that," Rossi allows. "Bite people. Go figure. You get shots?"
"Yes," Jean is grumpy now, well aware that she, most powerful telekinetic force on the planet, has been lain low by a conspiracy between a yap dog and an unfortunate choice of shoes. "The old woman refused to cough up any vaccination records, and cordially suggested I could die. So, rabies. I hate needles," says the doctor, hypocritically.
"Sounds like you're in the wrong field, in that case," Rossi suggests with cordial malice, lashes fanning black across his eyes. "Sort of like a cop hating guns, isn't it?"
"More like a cop knows how to use guns, so they aren't that comfortable trusting other people to use them on them." Jean pauses, and considers the example, before shaking her head. "No... that doesn't quite stretch that far. Anyways, so my best friend wants to date a cop," she changes the subject ruthlessly back to what first sent her stopping, and sits up in the borrowed chair. "Think I should be afraid, or should I offer congratulations?"
Rossi's mouth fishhooks crookedly, skimming across the slant of a grin: retreat of a different sort, attention watchful behind the humorous eyes. "You tell me," he suggests. The broad frame rocks lazily in the chair. "It's not like I've had a whole lot of luck with women." << --staying alive, >> whispers the thought, treacherously finishing where the tongue does not.
"I'm leaning towards congratulations, myself," says Jean. There's silence after that, the whisper of half-overheard thought enough to convince her to leave it at that, and to tip her chin downwards as she says it.
"Congratulations for me? Or for her?" Rossi asks, tipping his head towards Jean. Real amusement winds its way around deprecation; the curve of his mouth softens. Unprompted, he volunteers the understated tribute: "She's something else."
"For both, maybe. You're a step up from her last boyfriend," Jean points out, tipping her head sideways this time, and letting a grin of her own peek at him, before she, too turns her attention to the charms of one divine Ms. Monroe. "Something special," she agrees.
The detective rocks again. "Forge," he supplies, the name quirking up at the end in question.
"The mad engineer himself," Jean confirms. "See, you at least come with all your original parts. And don't go around shooting people and stuffing them in closets."
"He gonna come and try to stuff me in a closet again?"
"No, I gave him a lecture on Why We Don't Shoot People And Stuff Them In Closets," Jean promises, before her expression goes vague and distant. "Of course, he'll probably just start doing something else. I swear, we mostly keep him on faculty because otherwise he'll end up wandering around New York City, building neutron bombs out of coffee spoons because someone said it was impossible. You might have Logan turn up on your doorstep, though," she warns, attention returning with a strange twinkle in her eye.
Rossi stiffens slightly; the black head cants, baring the pulse that skips in the shadow of his jaw. "Yeah?" he says. And, "Logan dated Munroe, too? Shit. If beating off her past boyfriends is the worst of it, I'm armed and golden."
"No, no... -God-, no. We share nail polish and the occasional margarita mix, not boyfriends." Jean's nose crinkles at the notion of being caught with some of Storm's exes on her arm, better than the initial immediate spark of possessive jealousy that passed through her eyes at the idea of sharing the Wolverine with anyone. But then her mind's eye is caught by an image of Logan with painted claws, and the image leaks slightly, thank you intersecting trains of thought. She glances down at the bare toes of the sprained ankle, still sparkling with dark blue glitter and cheer. "If he shows up, it's because he wants to go mess with Jareth a little bit and thinks you might be interested."
"No offense to whatever whacked out yardstick you use to hire your faculty," Rossi drags out, remembered animosity acrid on the hard swells of accent, "but it doesn't take two of us to kick Tarrant's ass. It barely takes half of one of us. I don't get why you let him stick around, teaching at your school."
Irritation leaps in Jean's eyes and hardens her expression, directed off somewhere to the north, where Jareth Tarrant and Alyssa Carter go about their daily lives. "The only reason he still has his job is because I can confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that the idea never entered his head until two weeks ago, when Alyssa put it there," she states, voice low and her shoulders bristling. "Docked pay, probation, letter in his file, apology to the school -- because she graduated, because he's sorry about it, there's not a fucking thing else I can do, under the rules. And if they continue doing it when she's moved out... then it's out of my hands there, too. I'd kick something," she concludes, "If I didn't have a bum ankle. Where's that trashcan my Dad blew up? Still around?"
A muscle leaps under the stretch of Rossi's jaw. "Don't blow up my station," he says as a matter of course, and sinks down in the chair to drop his chin onto his chest, baritone hollowing into aggrieved timbres. "For all you guys are a school and all, you sort of specialize in the morons, don't you? What's the problem? Genes your only criteria for acceptance?"
"I think it's not so much morons as the gene amplifies any moron genes that might be present, along with the ones related to mutation," Jean sighs. She does not, however, do anything to Rossi's trashcan besides stare at it. "So you take the baseline level of human idiots in a population, but our idiocies are just so much flashier. Alyssa as a non-mutant would probably screw the captain of the football team. And Jareth would get seduced by a sorority girl and end up with the clap."
"Lucky you," Rossi says, laconic on the subject of mutation and intelligence. Cadbury, murmurs a private hint of self-satisfied complacency, is neither nincompoop nor drama queen. "So they're together. That why she moved out? Because of the whole--" He gestures. Eloquently. (Obscenely.)
"We're moving all the graduates out," Jean gives the fuller answer first, smirking wry appreciation at Italian physical eloquence. Her forehead finds the palm of one hand, massaging gently at her temples. "A few have hung around for a year already, and while I can understand wanting some time to figure yourself out, it's time for the little chickens to fly. -Alyssa- felt the need to inform the entire table that this meant she could keep having sex with Jareth, when the idea occurred to her."
The idle creak of chair squeaks to a stop. Rossi's eyebrows lift, shoulders straightening against the backdrop of filing cabinets and tape. "All of them?" he echoes, deep voice unstrung by surprise. Feet slam down again. "Even the -- what's her name. Rogue?"
"Rogue and Jubilee will be renting my flat in Greenwich from me," Jean replies, looking up from where face has met palm with a sudden flicker of unholy amusement in her eyes. "You look shocked. I promise, most of them are -not- Alyssa Carter."
The sweep of Rossi's hand dismisses Alyssa: less urgent, less critical than the prospect of Jubilee and Rogue unleashed on New York City. "Those two got their powers under control? I mean, Jubilee--" Memory reels backward, fishing that irrepressible nurse out of the dark, boredom-plagued seclusion at Xavier School. "Forget Jubilee. Rogue. She's dangerous."
"Rogue wears full length gloves morning and night," Jean recounts, giving Rossi a suddenly sharp look, eyes narrowed and hard and jaw set. "She takes them off only when absolutely necessary, like bathing and so on. She will never be able to control her power. She will never be able to touch anyone. She's spent the last six years first finding ways to live around other people, and then coming to terms with what those ways have done to her life. Pick another target, detective."
"All the time?" Rossi echoes, ignoring warning signs with an impatience sketched by the lift of chin and jerked hand. "Seems to me she had no problems taking those gloves off, at least once that I met her. She going to be okay out in the real world?" Sharp-focused in the detective's mind sings the corollary question: is the real world going to be okay with Rogue in it?
"You've got a funny set of standards there, Detective," Jean replies, the familiar 'Rossi' flitted clean away, and the irritation continuing to roil and build. Motions even, she begins to unwrap the ice pack, the purple bandage looping around and around again as she focuses on it. "Fortunately, whether or not the students head out into the world isn't resting on your verdict of whether they're ready for it. Here I thought you'd be happy that we're sending them off to live their own lives, instead of attracting strays."
The glitter of eyes is sardonic; the cast of clipped words is biting. "It's my fucking job to worry about this shit," Rossi points out, his own irritation swift to blacken his mood afresh. "Sending them out into the world's all well and good, until MA gets called out on their asses because someone's collapsed after patting Rogue's ass, or Jubilee's sense of humor sets off the Fourth of July in some poor shit's toilet."
"So what's the solution, detective? Keep them all out of your hair up in Westchester until we're sure they're all rational adults?" Jean turns the irritation back on Rossi, and plops the ice bag on a bare corner of his desk with a flick of the wrist and no telekinesis. She turns again to her ankle, and the rebandaging thereof. "Or maybe I should go in, do a little Pavlovian conditioning, telepath style. Lock Alyssa in a chastity belt, maybe--?" There's a brief pause, Jean's riposte interrupted as she focuses on this idea for a moment. Eventually, she concludes that "For better or worse, we've given them four or five or even six years of coaching, lecturing, drilling, practice, therapy, training and education. If they haven't learned from it, then it's their own damn' fault if they end up in jail."
"You can /warn/ us," Rossi says with scalding acrimony, his hand slapping onto the desktop to puff air under innocent papers nearby. They curl, jumping up in surprise before settling reluctantly again, askew, akilter. "Half the guys in MA spend a hell of a lot of time turning a blind eye where they can, and now you're just sprinkling your kids out into the general population without giving us a word to the wise. Fan-/fucking/-tastic."
Jean's answer to that is a Look. It's of the sort that suggests she can't quite find a response capable of the boot to the head she'd like to administer. She then resumes wrapping up her ankle, in lieu of the leavetaking she'd very much like, right about now.
The pencil, reclaimed, is tossed as soon as it is picked up into a clattering roll across files and desk. Rossi jerks himself up to stand, chair bumped back to ricochet violence against the cabinet; hands thrust in pockets, he stalks off. So much for farewell. So much for grace. So much for good mood and equanimity.
Beston, bumped in passing, peers with sorrowful brown eyes at Jean as he approaches. "Coffee?"
"Please," Jean sighs. She is still trying to wrap her ankle.
"Black?"
"Like the space between your partner's ears."
"Hard to read," Beston says without so much as an hint of irony, and pauses by the small table that serves as coffee dispenser and meeting space. The pot is half-full and still heated, though dated from what brewing only inside knowledge could say. "At least he's not humming anymore. I can't take the humming."
"I'm just glad it's Ororo planning on dating him," says Jean, one hand held to receive, unquestioning, the gift from the coffee gods. "And not me."
The mug is chipped and green, and sports the NYPD logo. Beston looks up from pouring, one eye for the pot, the other eye for Jean, and wonders aloud, "Ororo? There's a name. Usually he dates Ashleys and Brittanys and Ambers." A pause; he replaces the pot and threads a plastic stirrer into the corner of his mouth. "Leahs."
"Generally referred to as 'Munroe'. Poodle second in command," Jean reveals with a frank half-smile, tracing a fingertip against the logo, before the heat bleeding through the ceramic sends her quickly back to holding it properly. "My best friend since I was thirteen. I think he'll be good for her, but..." Trailing off, Jean takes a long and careful slurp of second-rate coffee, and catches Beston's eye with her own. "Does he seriously look at mutants and just see future case #45361? I think he'll be good for her, but not if he forgets she's a person, or that her friends and students are."
"He looks at everyone and sees future case #456-- whatever it was," Beston concedes, rounding the desks to take up Rossi's still-revolving seat. His own mug is blue: pastel, with a row of little ducks happily marching around its belly. "Then again, so do I. If you've been in this business long enough, you can't help it. If it makes you feel any better, I don't think it has anything to do with whether they're /mutants/ or not."
"He was pissed because our graduates, plus a few hangers-on from last year, are being shuffled off to move out," Jean recounts, eyes on Beston, grave old sounding board, first, and then on his ducks. Quack. Her finger taps the NYPD logo again, nerves overloaded from the first attempt and less sensitive on the second. "And that we didn't bother to let MA know in advance about that. You don't get pissed if a private school -without- mutants did that."
A hand massages the nape of that slouched neck, broad, spatulate fingers rubbing tension out of aging muscles. Beston looks apologetic. "Well, but apples and oranges, isn't it? I mean, a private school without mutants probably won't have a student that could blow up New York City if he sneezed. Chris is a worrier. Like an old woman, really." The rasping, Midwestern voice plods slowly and kindly through the sway of words. "He worries about your kids."
"And I'm worried about my best friend," Jean replies, expression pensive. "But if this is just... Chris being Chris, then--" She shrugs. There's no good answer to the question, and so, with an effortful gesture, she lets it drop. "I guess it's not uncommon for a minority group to fancy themselves discriminated at at the drop of a hat. And there aren't many minority groups out there with people giving so much good reason to be suspicious, thank-you-Magneto. I'll try and dial back on the protective friend response."
A briefly sheepish expression crosses Beston's face; the quiet, orderly mind relaxes in simultaneous realization, tension bled out of the hunch of shoulders. "You and me both," he says with grave bemusement, dark eyes twinkling. "So this friend of yours, the one you're feeling protective about. I met her a few times in passing, during that whole thing with Miller. What's she like?"
Jean finds the tension bandage much easier to wrap this time, moving swiftly now that she's no longer hurrying. The boot is put back on, zipped supportingly into place, and she picks up the coffee mug again, left hovering for a brief second in habit before it had kissed the desk. "Ororo Munroe," she rolls the name over her tongue, a smile creeping to her face again. "Well, she's confident, competant, can fly an SR-71 Blackbird upside down in a hurricane, loves margaritas, good-quality leather, her garden, and life in general. She's been through the fire, and she still manages to deal with it better than I ever do."
Beston digests this in silence, sliding each new description into methodical order with the last, weighing the summation against the entirety of Rossi. "Sounds like Chris's kind of woman," he says at last, the words cordial though troubled fingers stir ripples across equanimity. "It's been long enough since Leah, I guess. He hasn't had a lot of luck with women staying alive." An unconscious echo of Rossi's thought, spoken aloud with a mild look at Jean.
"I wouldn't worry about that," Jean predicts, and on this she is comfortable, shoulders relaxing and falling back as she leans into the chair and cradles the coffee, one toe nudging at the patient attache case and laptop within. "Not with Ororo. But... -has- it been long enough, since Leah?" Concern drives the prying, and Jean settles her eyes firmly on Beston's, letting him see what's behind the question, one best friend to one partner.
The other cop sinks his weight into his elbows, face blank, a murmur of uncertainty rustling in the forebrain. "You should ask him," Beston says, bass coasting into belated blandness. Cops do not talk about their partners. "He's a big boy. He can take care of himself. I mean, if Munroe's going to drop lightning bolts on his head, maybe not, but the other stuff--"
"I doubt I should go asking him anything for a while," Jean admits, setting down the coffee mug and giving Beston a wry smile as she carefully gets up to her feet again. "But if you're sure..."
"You know Chris." Does she? The easy reply is almost -- almost! -- a question. Beston straightens with her, standing in an old-school courtesy as timeworn as the shabby suit. "He cools down about as fast as he gets hot under the collar. He doesn't hold a grudge." Honestly tacks on, a wry second later, "--often."
"No wonder we spark at each other so often," Jean admits, shaking her head with a short laugh that accepts that as a summary of herself as well. "Italian boy and a redhead, not the smoothest sailing, but the squalls do blow over quick. I'll see you around, John. And I'll send Ororo your way some time. I think you'll like her."
Beston's slow smile in a revelation on that sad face, a gentle warmth that gives his homely features a neighborly, disarming charm. "I like everybody," he tells Jean, hands slipping into pockets. "If Chris and you like her, what's not to love? I'll be seeing you, Doc. Take care of that foot."
"Doctor, heal thyself. I always do," Jean promises Beston, taking attache case in hand and lightly brushing his arm as she passes out and into the hall. The fact that it's often one Ororo Munroe that helps see to it that Jean does... well, that's a secret that will keep. "Hey, Ken," she greets, out of sight but not out of earshot yet, and the smooth alto voice mixes with that of the men and women and general noise of the precinct until Jean is gone.
[Log ends]
Jean drops by to talk to Rossi at the precinct. She spills the girl talk beans. Rossi goes grar. Jean goes rawr. Beston goes sheesh, and they all fall down.