Vanessa & Jean | Tuesday morning

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As promised, Vanessa calls Jean to follow up with her from the previous night.

Bishop wasn't in the office. They tended to miss each other a fair bit of the time as they ran around to look into things and Vanessa was cool with that. Her solitude in the office was welcome most days but especially when she picked up the phone and called Jean, as promised. She didn't want Bishop to tease or needle her over anything he could have overheard if he'd actually been in.

She listened to the line ring in her ear and played with the business card in her hand. It read: Andrew Wellman, Criminal Prosecutor. Bloody Kryptonite.

Jean was enjoying a bit of breakfast: a bagel with a smear of cream cheese and a bowl of strawberries. She sat in the kitchen, reading the paper, when her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the caller ID, finding 'Bluebird' as the caller, as expected.

"How did it go?" she said.

Vanessa couldn't help the smile and it came through in her voice. "He's a good cook. I'm not sure I want to trust him with knives since he almost cut off his fingertip, but as long as he's properly supervised by someone who's good with knives then he gets a thumbs up in the kitchen."

Jean burst out laughing as she imagined the poor guy's misfortune with the cutlery. It was ironic, really. For all his thoughts about cooking the guy could barely wield a knife?

"But a good time was had by all?" she said. She still had a fondness for the guy.

Not enough to actually ever meet him but she needed something outside of the school to fixate on and the social lives of others was currently filling that niche nicely.

"Yeah, a good time was had by all. Thing about prostitutes is that unless you're the strung out junkie on the corner guys probably aren't just going to you for sex. They're going to you to be listened to and taken care of in a way." He'd really just needed a woman to be around who wasn't a backstabbing slut. He needed a little faith in the female gender again, that's all. Funny how he ended up with a woman who used to both fuck and kill for money.

"And I think the knife thing was just nerves, actually. You know, he brings a strange woman home with him who used to be a whore and he has no idea if I might try to kill him, be psychotic, steal all his valuables or whatever. But we had fun. Laughed a lot, got broccoli thrown at me for bad jokes and we wound up on his couch. No heart break involved." She hoped maybe, just maybe, there had been a bit of healing. Maybe that was narcissistic.

Jean closed her paper, folding it neatly on the table. "He'd never done something like that before. It was new territory for him," she said.

"But I'm glad."

Shaking her head, Jean smirked. "I'm halfway tempted to start a dating service. Those brothers from earlier left with their dates just as you were leaving with Andrew."

She felt a bit like Aphrodite.

"But only halfway."

Prying into people's minds wasn't too much of a common practice, especially around those at Xavier's. It was a trust thing. It didn't mean she wouldn't do it if she sensed something particularly problematic, but by default she tended to steer clear.

"I'm going to get you a little pair of wings and maybe a bow and arrow," Vanessa joked. She wondered if the skeezy brothers should be trusted with women at all. Just because they were attracted to less typically beautiful women thanks to Jean's tampering didn't mean they were actually less skeezy.

"Oh! And I have actual permission to run around wearing him. I think he actually thought it was cool, but made me swear up and down not to commit any crimes while I wear him. I wasn't planning on it anyway, but getting arrested with the fingerprints of a criminal prosecutor? Not a bright idea, that."

Jean arched a brow, pausing mid-sip of her coffee. "Criminal prosecutor? That explains a lot."
She'd just been looking for medical history. The surface thoughts had crowded in, and she hadn't dug too deep.

"Sorry, I should've been more thorough," she said.

"Pleasantly surprised he's so understanding. A lot of the law enforcement types can be anti-mutant," she said. Perhaps because they saw them as the wild card, living weapons they could not disarm.

But there were always exceptions.

"And I would absolutely love a bow and arrow."

"I never expected you to give me his profession, social security number, home address and rap sheet," Vanessa pointed out. "I think you'd be cute as a little cupid. But I'm not trusting you with real arrows. I'll get you ones with suction cups on the ends or cotton ball type things so you can douse them in powder and leave little red powder puffs on your targets or summat."

Jean cocked her head to the side, smiling. "It sounds like you forget that I actually am a trained medical doctor and X-Man, which includes weapons training. I never said the bow and arrow was for a stint as cupid," she mused.

"It sounded like it'd be something fun to learn how to use."

Pausing a moment, she shook her head.

"Still, the criminal prosecutor was an important thing to have noticed. I'm normally more careful than that. I should've seen it right away."

Certain aspects of a person tended to show up more vividly in the mind than others, especially if they saw it as a part of their being. Cops, lawyers, doctors, firemen, professions that society deemed as 'important' were often taken as important to that person and should've been a bright red flag on his mental landscape.

She found herself dwelling on it because it was a big testament to a lot of things escaping her notice lately, or at least being so far off base when it came to certain people as to be on another continent.

"Maybe it just wasn't his focus at the time. You said he was mostly thinking about sex. That overrides a whole world of things. And I don't trust you with a bow and arrow. Cupid purposes or not. Ain't happenin', Ginger. You'd end up slaughtering poor woodland creatures by accident. Or cheating and using your telekinesis to guide the arrow which defeats the point."

Vanessa didn't really distrust Jean that much. But it was more fun to poke at her about it than to just give in or offer to teach her archery. Besides, you couldn't trust a redhead with a weapon. To fiery and unstable. Vanessa was, of course, ignoring that she had been born a redhead herself. She had white hair now, she no longer qualified.

Jean fell silent for a moment or two. "Now you do realize by telling someone they cannot do something makes them want to do that something even more? Of course you do. You are the epitome of want, take, have," she said, leaning back in her chair.

She'd figured out that part of Vanessa's game awhile back and was apt to play along.

"So if you see me running around with a bow and arrow, it's all your fault," she said, shrugging nonchalantly.

And...okay, so maybe Vanessa was right about Andrew. The male and female libido often overtook the rational brain if the body let it and Andrew seemed primed to let it.

A hand clutched Vanessa's chest over her heart even though Jean wouldn't be able to see it. She could, however, hear the indignant gasp that went along with the gesture. "Me? Want, take, have crazy? Are you suggesting I have a problem with a rampant id? I don't take everything I want." Now she was smirking and it translated into the smug tone of her voice. "Otherwise I would have slept with Andrew. He's quite fit, you know."

God, was that man ever fit. She had spent a fair few hours curled up against him and partially atop him on that couch of his. That was a man who put in his fair share of hours at the gym. It was a good way to decompress from stressful days, which she assumed he had a lot of in his line of work. Still...she had no doubts that he was damn distracting naked.

"I'll blame the bow and arrow on Laurie. I'll just say you got the idea from seeing her out on the archery range." After she'd said it Vanessa realized she'd probably just given Jean the idea to talk to Laurie about learning her way around a bow. Brilliant.

"The swift, indignant insistence of your innocence is a big indicator of guilt, my dear Bluebird. You have the foresight to use some moderation but when it comes down to it...you aren't afraid to step up to the plate if you are really craving something. You don't back down if you truly want it. Can you argue with that?" Jean said with a grin.

It wasn't necessarily a bad trait. Unless you were committing larceny, that is.

"Hmm, it has been awhile since I've spoken to Laurie....There may be some argument from witnesses there, but you're welcome to try to play that card, even if you do see her much more than I do."

"You'd be amazed what people will believe when you've got a telepath in the mix," Vanessa told her, a slight sound of triumph in her voice. "You don't need witnesses to attest that you were at the scene, just that Laurie was and you exist. You can't really prove where your mind wandered off to while you were in other parts of the mansion." That saddest bit was that Vanessa was well aware that there were people paranoid about telepaths enough to believe it, too.

"Aye, and no. I can't argue with the fact that I don't back down. I'm not fond of getting run over and that's what happens when you back down on something you want."

Jean glanced toward the window, where a couple of the students were playing outside.

"I imagine not," she said, some of the playfulness in her voice deadening. It was the reality of the situation, joke or not, that the mere presence of her ability had garnered a fair amount of animosity from some over the years.

Sometimes it was warranted, sometimes not.

She took another sip of her coffee, and smiled.

"Then we are in agreement."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've an uncontrollable id." Vanessa rolled her eyes a little. "I should probably get back to actual work. I love paperwork, I do. Can't you tell by the joy in my voice," she asked in a deadpan.

Jean smiled. "Well...takes one to know one, I suppose," she said.

And yes, it was an acknowledgement of possessing similar qualities, leaving an opening for another turn in their game. There had a been a time where she had let things go, held it in, so much so that it came back to bite her on the ass.

"If you were more enthusiastic I fear I might be concerned you were having too much fun."

"It's amazing how many piles of paper a single subject can generate," she said. Be it an investigative case, patient, or student, they always resulted in a paper trail.

"Aye. The computer age hasn't done much but cut down on the number of sheets of paper since typewritten stuff's always smaller than handwriting. And in some cases the only way to make stuff legible." Vanessa sighed. "I've not got much of a will to dig my way out if I get buried though. Try not to kill the students, aye Ginger?"

"I'm sure Laurie would be glad to help motivate you if you find yourself in too much of a jam," Jean said with amusement.

Their office camaraderie had eventually somehow filtered down amongst the masses. The school was never big on keeping secrets. Not that it was much of a secret.

Jean fell silent for a moment, just slightly off beat at Vanessa's comment. It was only a half of a second.

"And I'll work on it. With my new bow and arrow it might be difficult to resist temptation," she said with a faint smirk.

She didn't know how much of a talker Jean-Paul was. Hopefully in that instance he had kept things to himself.

"Let me know if our charming prosecutor decides to call again?"

"I gave Laurie to Bishop. She's only here to motivate him and feed me." Which was a form of motivation all on it's own anyway. "As for the prosecutor, will do, Sergeant Ginger." Vanessa even gave the empty air a salute. "I'll let you know the details if I start having a passionate affair with him, too."

Vanessa? Passionate affair? Nah, never. Well, not while dating Lex anyway.

"Anyway, I'll talk to you later, love. Go scare some kids into being smart!" She made a kissy noise into the phone and everything.

"Wonderful. I'll be waiting by the phone for your report, Lieutenant," Jean said, tracing her finger along the letters of the headline of the newspaper with a smile.

"Bye."

She hung up the phone, then drained the rest of her coffee, wiping the excess from her lips. Rising from the table, she poured another cup of the magical brew, then went to start her day.