xp_logs | Nate and Jane, Friday Morning

Nate is evil. Jane is mortified. Elpis employees are gossipy.

"Soooooo." Nathan had been hovering, rather vulture-ish, around the office this afternoon, but his advance on Jane's desk had been rather... sudden. As if he'd sensed the opportunity and decided to pounce. He leaned against the desk, gazing down at her with barely-veiled amusement in his eyes. "I was talking to Anika at lunch today. She was catching me up on all the gossip."

"Oh?" Jane eyed Nate a bit nervously, resisting the sudden urge to flee. He looked altogether to pleased with himself, which was never, ever a good sign. "Hear anything interesting?"

"Ohhhh, just the usual. Who's argued with whom. Who's picked up which new hobby. What little Mike did this week." Nathan paused a beat, then went on in a deadpan voice. "Who was having fun with whom during their visit to Tel Aviv..."

Jane's eyes widened in alarm. "Well, it sounds like you had a very nice chat," she chirped, her voice a bit strangled. Freaking Anika couldn't keep her mouth shut, could she? Oh noooooooo. She had to go blabbing to Nate. And now Nate was going to pester the living heck out of her FOREVER. "You'll have to tell me all about it sometime, I'm just so busy-busy today. You know."

"Now, don't be like that," Nathan said, mock-sorrowfully. This was far too much fun, really. That probably made him an evil man. "We're all one big happy family, aren't we? We share things, don't we? And this certainly doesn't sound like it was anything bad." In fact, he had... well, giggled, when Anika had told him.

"It wasn't bad!" Jane protested indignantly."I'll have you know Rich was very, very good! And I..." Her face flamed red the second the words popped out of her mouth. "I mean, that he wasn't but that's not what I, oh, oh, I mean, crap!" She couldn't talk to Nathan about this! Or possibly anything else. Ever.

"Well," Nathan said with a perfectly straight face. "I'm glad to know his skills weren't, uh, lacking. Saves one of us older male types from having to take him out, buy him a drink, and talk to him about how one does these things."

"NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!" she shrieked, and punched him hard in the shoulder. Normally she didn't advocate punching one's boss, but this was completely justified in this instance. Strangling him would be completely justified in this instance. "We are SO done talking about this," she informed him with threatened retaliation dripping off each syllable. "We were done talking about this yesterday."

"All right. We won't talk about that," Nathan said mock-repentantly, rubbing his shoulder. "Seriously, though, am I not allowed to be at least a little pleased? Neither of you have enough of a social life, in my meddlesome and not so humble opinion." And really, there were stranger pairings in the world than an ex-mutant supersoldier and an amnesiac.

That drew her up short. "At least you can acknowledge your flaws," she snarked absently while she tried to gather her thoughts. The mortification was going to take a good long while to fade away completely, but Jane found that she was oddly relieved to find that he approved of the relationship. Such that it was. Rich being in Tel Aviv and her in New York, they'd left it a bit open-ended.

"He's a good guy, you know? I like him." she said finally. "He's interesting. Nice. Sane."

Nathan was silent for a moment, pondering. "You know what he was doing the first time we met?" he asked. "He'd just been in a helicopter crash - he was working with MacInnis, to rescue a group of kids before they could be taken to a Mistra training facility. Their helicopter was shot down, and Malcolm... Rich," Nathan corrected himself, "was whipping up a blizzard with his powers, trying to keep them from being found for long enough for the cavalry to get there. The impressive thing is that he was doing this with two broken legs. Took a lot of determination."

Jane nodded. That fit with what she knew. Rich didn't talk about himself much, but what Nate said filled in some blanks. Rather big ones, actually. "I asked him about that once. He told me about the kids, but not about his legs. He did say you'd acted like a 'darn fool idiot', but I'm kinda thinking that was maybe meant to distract me."

Nathan smiled a little. "No, I was a bit.. .headlong in my tactical decision-making that day. But it was worth it," he concluded quietly, thinking about Tim. A little shake of his head banished the ghosts, and he refocused again on Jane. "I will confess," he went on, the smile growing, "my first impulse was to demand that she put him on the phone so I could give him a good talking-to."

That statement brought her receding mortification levels back in full force. "Don't you dare. In fact, I think I might call him and make sure you didn't." This had to be what it was like to have an older brother, Jane thought, teetering on the edge of affection and irritation. Well meaning and annoying as all heck. "I don't go calling Moira to make sure she's treating you right, and not just because she's scary."

"Can I give you a good talking-to?" Nathan's eyes were twinkling wickedly now. "Rich is a special case, you know. They didn't precisely encourage healthy relationship-building with members of the opposite sex at Mistra."

"You mean this isn't it?" She gave him a tormented look. "If I promise I won't break him, maim him, or otherwise damage him, can we maybe call it good?"

"Actually, I only want you to promise me one thing," Nathan said, more seriously this time. "Or two, really, I suppose. Promise me," he said, "that the two of you will have fun with.. this, whatever it turns out to be, because both of you deserve it. And promise me that if it turns out to be fun and brief, that you stay friends afterwards." His smile was less teasing and more warm. "Because both of you deserve that, too."

"I promise, Nate," she said, and she meant it. She liked to think that if nothing else Rich was a very good friend (or, well, they were starting to be very good friends, anyway,) and you could never have too many friends. "I'll be careful with him."

"So long as he's likewise careful with you, then we're all good. And don't worry about me calling him and giving him this same talk. I mean, that would be thoroughly inefficient. So I asked Gavin to do it." Nathan stepped prudently back out of hitting range.

Jane threw her stapler at him instead.