Scott and Jean, Monday evening

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

After finishing work in the hangar, Scott decides to have some overdue office hours. Jean arrives with questions regarding the files she's been reading, and the two of them actually manage to have a serious X-Men related discussion for... oh, five minutes or so before it degenerates into flirting. They're improving.


Jean walked down the hallway, flipping back and forth between the papers in her hands - it would have been easier to just read the files on the computer, but Jean preferred hardcopy when she was working, which meant the shredder in her office had been getting a lot more work recently. God, but the X-men had changed. She'd been stunned to see how many missions they'd done in the last two years, but not as stunned as the first time she'd run across reference to official sanctions of their activities. And requests. It had started wheels turning in her mind, and she'd decided to go talk to Scott, get an idea of how things stood.

Scott had his door open, a tacit invitation to the students to come in to talk if any of them wanted. He'd finished in the hangar a little while ago and decided that he needed to make up for his lack of office hours this weekend. No one had taken him up on it yet... oh, wait. Sensing who was coming down the hall towards his door, Scott looked up from his computer and grinned. "The next time you chide me for reading and walking I'm going to laugh at you," he said to Jean as she appeared in the doorway.

She grinned at him before sitting in the chair opposite his desk. "A, I was perusing, not reading and b, you laugh at me anyway. Have you got time to talk?"

"I always have time for you," Scott said, saving the file he'd been working on. "Still on the files, huh?"

"Well, there are approximately two thousand of them, and when did we start keeping full files on training activities, anyway? I may have an eidetic memory, but there's still a limit on how much reading I can do in a day, particularly with work down in the medlab. But yes, I did want to talk to you about some of these. What is our current stance on, well, the government and other officials in regards to the X-Men?"

"A little different than it used to be," Scott said with a deadpan look. Just to be annoying.

She pursed her lips at him, quirking an eyebrow. "Just a touch, yes," she agreed. "I assume we aren't known openly, but it's more an upper level, need to know sort of thing in some departments?"

"We have a few contacts," Scott said, and explained to her about Val Cooper and Fred Duncan. "Also a certain amount of official... support, from the upper levels. Charles had a trip to Washington last year that helped set a lot of this up." He leaned back in his chair, slouching a little. "We've had operations since that have kind of developed that further. Youra's probably the biggest-scale example of that. I don't know if you've gotten that far yet, but we actually went in alongside government troops." He smiled a bit playfully. "I think they were Delta Force, but I never actually got a straight answer."

"Hmmm, interesting..." Jean pulled a pencil from behind her ear to make a couple notes as he was explaining. "And I saw that there have been small scale official interactions, local police forces and so on. It could be really useful fighting off this newest bit of legislative nonsense they're trying to get on the books if I could find out what the official line they took on those sort of things was. Am going to have to do some research."

"We seem to be on generally good terms with the FBI these days, too," Scott offered, unable to help a smirk as he remembered the outcome of the Ricochet mission. "You should talk to Madelyn. She's been our contact with Fred Duncan for a lot of this..."

"I can hunt down Madelyn, easily, although worming anything useable in public out of the FBI is a pain and a half." Jean paused for a second, then tucked the pencil away. "Running away with myself again. But I have plans, so this could work. And, all things considered, we've come a long way from you, Hank, 'Ro and I doing the very small bit we could to make the world a safer place."

She was plotting. He loved the look she got when she was plotting. "Hence things like the exhaustive training records," he said helpfully, then grew more serious. "Part of my problem this fall was, I think, the fact that everything had gotten so much bigger and more complicated and yet I was trying to do all the same work I had back when it was just the small group of us. I'm very surprised I didn't get a lightning bolt in an awkward place for being that much of an idiot."

"It makes sense. The sudden... increase, I mean. After what happened with Stryker and Charles, it's become much harder for mutants to keep a low profile. From what Charles has said, that's a large part of why the student body increased so dramatically. But along with it being harder for us to hide, it's a lot harder for everybody else to ignore the so-called mutant problem. And whenever I find out which spin-doctor came up with that term, I am going to give them a mutant problem."

Okay, as much fun as the plotting look was, the impassioned look was seventy different kinds of sexy all at once, and he really ought to be paying attention to what she was saying, because she was right and it was true and... all that, but damn.

The thing about having a telepath for a girlfriend was that she knew when you weren't paying attention to what she was saying. Of course, she also knew what you were paying attention to, and it was hard to be annoyed with someone who thought you were 'seventy different kinds of sexy all at once'. Jean wondered idly if she could get him to enumerate all seventy, but was rather certain her ego would explode well before they got out of the teens. And that would just be messy. "You know, that 'I'm paying attention and I fully agree' look would work a lot better if I couldn't read your mind," Jean said, attempting to look severe but completely failing to keep the amusement out of her eyes.

Scott managed to keep a perfectly straight face. "But see, this is proof that I love you for your mind. Although that shirt? I could love you for that shirt, too..."

Jean glanced down, then arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm pretty sure you have loved me for this shirt, at least twice."

"And how many of the teenaged boys fell down the stairs when you walked past them in that shirt?" he asked, then couldn't help the sudden, warm smile that blazed across his face at the memory. "Although if I remember correctly, it was a skirt, that first time we met."

"None, thank you very much. They are all very good at not giving away their distraction outside of their heads. It's a survival trait around here." Seriously, if any of the boys fell literally every time one of the beautiful women at the school walked past they'd have too many bruises to count. "And that's because you've got this thing about my legs..." Jean added, crossing them as she spoke.

"I'm a shameless lech," Scott said cheerfully, then laughed and leaned forward, resting his arms on the edge of the desk. "Didn't mean to sidetrack the conversation," he said, only somewhat apologetically. His eyes kept getting drawn to her legs.

"Completely shameless. But I think it's cute, so clearly it works for both of us. And I got the answers I needed, and have no real burning desire to go back to reading the training synopsis for 2004, therefore sidetracking is a good thing. Was the synopsis your idea, by the way? Almost as long as the individual files for the year together, but with less funny stories about Nathan blowing things up."

"It... may have been," Scott said somewhat meekly. "I thought it would be useful. Once the training synopsis for 2005 is done, I mean, and we can track changes in performance across the 24 month period..."

Jean grinned. He might find her talking about work attractive, but she thought his obsessive structuring was too cute for words. Well, that, and the slightly bashful look he got when she caught him at it. "Yes, I thought I detected your organizational hand behind the idea. And it is a good one. It's just also a boring read, and one which I needed a distraction from. Still need, actually."

Scott tried not to choke. "Um. Well, that was blunt," he said, a smile tugging at his lips.

"That the synopsis is boring? Scott, love, the fact that you don't find reading and writing training synopsises boring is, well, one of the many reasons I love you, but also abnormal." She chuckled slightly. "But it's the good sort of abnormal that the team needs."

"Obsessive-compulsive," Scott said, smiling although he knew there was a little bit too much truth in that. "Just say it."

"I'm just the medical doctor, and shall leave all such titles to Charles' providence. And avoid messing with your sock drawer," she added, teasingly. "So what am I distracting you from, in my search for my own distractions?"

"I was counting the ways," he said, rallying rather gallantly. "Hadn't gotten close to the seventy yet, though..."

Jean's eyes sparkled, and actually blushed faintly. "God, you are too wonderful for words, you know that?"

"Right back at you," he said, watching as she raised a hand to tuck her hair behind one ear. Something nagged at him, watching the gesture, and he filed it away for further contemplation.

"So, the responsible part of me is saying I should go finish some reading, and the irresponsible part of me wants to steal you for lunch before my powers session this afternoon. Have you got time?"

"Most certainly do," Scott said immediately, rising. "The paperwork can wait." He came around the desk and offered her a hand, pulling her up out of her chair when she took it.

"Excellent." Jean took the chance to steal a kiss. "Shall we go out on the town then? Italian, maybe?"

"Time away from here? With you? What a concept," Scott said teasingly.

"And you can be the alpha male with the hot girlfriend and the fast car to strangers, if you want. I won't even tease you out loud for it."

Scott brought the hand he was still holding to his lips and kissed it. "You're so good to me."

"Love you," she said, the teasing gone from her voice.

"Love you too," he said quietly. Still holding onto her hand.