Morgan & Jean-Paul

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Morgan comes home from Africa but her first stop is not her own suite.

A familiar book, Vivaldi playing at unintrusive levels, and a cup of herbal tea. All perfect for relaxing with on a lazy afternoon or whiling away the morning. The issue with all of this that it was nearly three in the morning and Jean-Paul was on his couch, dressed for bed, and still trying to lull himself into a calm enough state of mind that it would be worth going to bed. He was already all but certain that it was a lost cause, so the knock on the door was a welcome, if unexpected distraction.

Morgan had obviously not bothered to go to her own room before arriving at Jean-Paul's. Her bag was still slung over her shoulder, the parcel was smaller than it should have been. Morgan was of the opinion that three shirts and two pairs of pants was all you really needed. If you needed more it could be procured. Her heaviest baggage was always her artillery, which for obvious reasons could not be transported in her luggage on a commercial flight. She looked tired and a bit disheveled. "Can I stay with you?" She didn't offer any explanation.

The door opened wider in wordless invitation.

"I was wondering when you'd come back," he said softly, moving to take her bag. "You look as if you could use a day in a hot shower and a week in bed."

Morgan let him take the bag without much of a fight and shrugged as she trailed through the door. "Aye, but it's only one decent night of sleep I really need. I don't think I've any classes to deal with tomorrow until the afternoon anyhow. The shower would just irritate the stitches since I've never learned to not snag them in the process of washing." She flopped down onto Jean-Paul's couch gracelessly. "Better to keep that to an as needed minimum for a bit, I think. That or employ someone to do all the soaping for me."

"Will I wind up with a black eye if I offer?" He set the duffel aside. Morgan did not look uncollected so much as frayed. Either way, not a welcome sight on a friend. He paced over to the couch and took a seat beside her, brushing a lock of tangled white hair back behind one ear. "You are absolutely welcome to stay, of course. I was getting no sleep tonight anyway, and so I am at your disposal."

Even in the face of all her exhaustion and the mental backflips her mind was putting her through, Morgan could spare a smirk for him. It wasn't even forced. "No, but you might get taken up on it. Airplanes and airports make me feel gross." She shuddered a bit, frowned, and then spun around in place. Her legs were laid across Jean-Paul's lap and without a moment of hesitation Morgan curled into his side, even nudging his arm up and around her in the process. "Flights from Africa? Really. Bloody. Long."

"I'm offering. I think you can trust that I have no ulterior motives." Gross or not, she got a careful squeeze and a kiss on the brow as she cuddled against the warm body beside her. "I'll take your word on it. Where did you get cut?"

The look on her face in response to the question wondered if he was perhaps momentarily stupid. "Just checking here, do you actually think that anything I would need stitches for would be a cut? Really? God, that's really cute."

Her incredulous look only earned a soft snort. "Cut, stabbed, glassed, shot, operated on, or otherwise having the inside of the skin exposed to the outside. 'Cut' seemed like a good catch-all."

"Try shot, but they sucked at it because it was a fly-by, not a piercing. That's the good one, though." She tapped the place on her left arm where the stitched up bullet graze was. "It was the dogs that wanted me for dinner that were a bitch. All that tearing flesh smarts. And I need to teach self-defense and maybe accidentally get thrown into a wall by kids tomorrow."

"And a doctor's note is out of the question." Not even a question, that one. "Sounds like a rotten trip, all in all."

She shrugged, then shook her head and nuzzled into his neck in that spot she liked to occupy. "It wasn't actually. I'm just really grumpy from the plane ride, honestly. I've had worse than the dogs. Actually, the fucking tetanus shot was worse on the scale of 'stuff that sucked.' Besides, I got paid really well for what wasn't a lot of work. No one died who I was supposed to stop from dying, other people did. Broke out the captives, played the big fucking hero. It was a good time, all in all. I'm just sleep deprived because it was a long fucking flight and I can't ever sleep on planes." That was obviously not all that was bugging her, though, no matter what she said.

"It's good when a mission goes off so well." He rested his chin atop her head (not a usual vantage point, considering that Morgan was taller than him in either of the forms that he usually spent time with) and rubbed the back of her neck gently with his free hand. Whatever the mission had entailed, the weariness that showed in her every move and weighed the tone of her voice was deeper than skin and bone. "A shame, though. Even when we get to be heroes, even when it all goes right, it does not make everything better."

She sighed, but she also relaxed a little thanks to the rubbing at the back of her neck. "No, sometimes it just reminds you of how wrong things are." Both of her arms wrapped around his waist and Vanessa inched in a bit closer to Jean-Paul. If it was possible to steal his body heat to warm the cold that had settled in the center of her then she would accomplish it. "I think I liked it better when I worked non-stop. No time to stop and think. No time to let it affect you in certain ways. I never had this sort of place to go home to afterward thing like this, just sleep and then another job. I'm not sure I like this effect," she told him in a small voice.

For someone who knew her posture and voice it was clearly off. Morgan's voice had grown softer and quieter. The Irish in her accent had fallen away and it was all Southie in her tone. It wasn't really Morgan's voice at all that spoke. There was also a pliable softness in her posture, in the way her shoulders were held. Vanessa was more meek than Morgan was and the transition was almost palpable.

"Sometimes it's worth it," Jean-Paul murmured back, as if speaking in a normal tone might startle her. She was practically balled up in his lap now and he shifted his weight a bit to settle her there more comfortably, one arm wrapping around in a more secure embrace. He wouldn't have expected this reaction from the brash woman he'd thought he'd known, but he certainly was not going to push her away. "The pins and needles go away after a while, and then...it's a matter of deciding whether or not it's worth taking the chance, I think. There's a lot of downside to letting yourself feel."

"I didn't not feel before; I just wasn't affected," she clarified. She wasn't sure how she could explain that. "This just hit a little close to home, I guess." The downside of being as honest as she was happened to be that if she said anything she said the truth. The downside of the mask that was Morgan slipping off was that Vanessa admitted to a lot of things that Morgan never would. Vanessa was more willing to be vulnerable. In some ways she didn't know how not to be. After all, that was what the mask was for.

"What happened?" He hated asking that question. Those two words were what came was what came after the damage was done, when there wasn't anything to do but to just be there and hope you'd be allowed to help, if you could at all. It was still the most he could think of to do.

She frowned to herself and Vanessa burrowed her face further into Jean-Paul's neck. After a long silence she shifted a little, not leaving her burrowed, nuzzled place in his neck but being able to speak audibly now. "We went in for one thing, but between us and the thing we needed was this cell. The dogs," obviously the ones who had gotten chunks of her to tear, "were guarding it. They were attack dogs, not guard dogs. Take out the threat, inform master after it was dispatched sort. The cell was full of girls. Little girls. Most weren't even teenagers yet." Vanessa stopped and swallowed hard. "And they all knew why they were there. And they knew that I knew why they were there, too. They knew they'd be bought to be some man's sex toy." And they'd known with one look that Morgan had known exactly what that was like.

The arms around her tightened protectively.

"You got them out. You gave them another chance." That was as positive as Jean-Paul could be; they were being too honest for anything else. A chance was no small thing, even if it still wouldn't ever feel like enough. It didn't erase the hot anger that came with the knowledge that children so young could even have a concept of such debasement. He couldn't even imagine what coming face to face with that had sparked in Morgan.

"Mm." It was all she said for a while. Vanessa had gone back to a more fully burrowed position where her face and his neck were concerned. She didn't like the memories of her teenage years those little girls had brought up. They were cute kids. They were kids and the part of her which was fiercely protective of the students at Xavier's, albeit quietly, wanted to rip the balls off of the man who had put them in that cell. That was all over though. He wouldn't be selling kids to perverts anymore. There was no way he'd gotten out of that house with the shape Bishop and LeBeau had left him in.

"They shouldn't have needed another chance." The words were muffled against his skin. "No one should have stolen the first one. He hadn't the right." There was an edge to that last word and while it was certainly said in Vanessa's manner of speaking, it was said more aggressively than she generally sounded.

"He did not. I doubt anyone will lose any sleep over his death." An assumption, perhaps, but one he felt safe in making, given Morgan's earlier description of how the job had gone down.

Vanessa pulled back enough so that she could look up at Jean-Paul from his shoulder. The look in her eyes was not one Morgan ever had. They were bare and open, something perhaps only so noticeable when contrasted with the guarded look Morgan always held. "I know you were busy not getting any sleep tonight, but what are the odds I can drag you into bed anyway?"

Given his preferences, Jean-Paul found it a distinctly surreal sensation to have yet another woman breaking his heart.

"One hundred percent in your favor."

Vanessa gave him a fairly weak smile, but a distinctly sincere one. Unlike Morgan, when Vanessa smiled it flourished across her mouth fully. A light kiss followed before the woman uncurled from the ball she'd become in his lap and crawled out of it. Silently, she held out a hand to him.