Doug and Jubilee (backdated)

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Backdated to February 8th. Jubilee comes to Doug for a favor, though she has a funny way of asking for it.


Jubilee allowed a single drop of water to fall from the glass she held, grinning slightly as it hit Doug directly in the middle of his forehead. She'd managed to stealth her way into the room, and the urge to prank him had been too tempting to resist. She needed him awake to help her with her research anyhow, she'd found a few leads but she needed an expert technical eye to crack their coded messages, and while she could do it herself in time; going to Doug was simply faster and less time consuming. The fact that it was 4am in the morning never even crossed her mind.

Doug came awake in a fluid motion, reaching for the nearest weapon to his bed. In this case it was a small telescoping baton, the sort that snapped out to full length with the flick of a wrist. A swipe sent the intruder sliding back out of the way, and then Doug belatedly came to full awareness and realized who his 'intruder' was. "Jesus, Jubilee," he muttered.

Jubilee grumbled softly to herself from where she crouched on the ground at the side of his bed. She'd allowed her body to move with the force of the swipe and landed crouched on her toes, ready for another dodge should he continue the attack.

"Dude, you like, totally need to lay off the coffee or somethin' before bed. You're lucky I'm fast on my feet," Jubilee said, wondering if she should mention the glass of water that had evacuated its contents onto his face when she'd thrown it in a reflective gesture.

"I haven't had any coffee this week," Doug responded, wiping his face dry. "Besides, how lightly do you sleep, even in your own apartment, hm?" The question was backed by Doug's knowledge of her sleep habits, given the sexual turn to their friendship after Marie-Ange had left, but was said without malice. "Pot, kettle, hm?"

"Only if you're making tea," Jubilee noted with a grin, settling cross legged onto one side of his bed and dragging her laptop back into her lap. "I need your help hunting down a source."

She didn't bother to answer him on the sleep pattern question; they both knew she slept badly most nights, and extremely lightly even when she did manage to drop off. Her training with the New Orleans' guilds, plus Remy's tender mercies had left her with an extremely alert sense of the spaces around her.

"What's in it for me?" Doug muttered blearily. But really, it was going to take him a while to come down off the adrenaline spike, so it wasn't like he had anything better to do at the moment. "Okay," he said, sitting up and propping pillows against the headboard and letting the covers fall to his lap.

Jubilee raised her eyebrows and took on a wounded gamin look. "You mean you wouldn't do it out of the kindness of your heart? I am wounded, Douglas, wounded to the core!"

Doug raised his eyebrow in reply, not fooled by Jubilee's wounded look. "How many things do any of us do out of the kindness of our hearts these days?" The banter masked the fact that yes, Doug -would- do things out of the kindness of his heart for any member of X-Force. Even Remy, if he needed it. As hardened as he was becoming, Doug was still manifestly the idealist of X-Force.

"Not many, at least not where people can see, it's bad for business. But you do, even these days. You just don't like to admit that you've still got that squishy marshmallow center thing going on. No one's so much of a hardass that they can completely subsume their basic personality, dude. You're a good guy at heart," Jubilee noted as she moved from her position on his bed, crawling up into Doug's lap.

She settled herself, unconcerned by whether he really wanted her sitting on his lap or not. "Now, take a look at this traffic, they're using multiple IP masking techniques but I think I've got a line on where they're originally coming from."

Body modesty wasn't an issue, despite the fact that he slept naked more often than not, and this was one of those times. Intimacy wasn't quite the problem either, given that they'd slept together. Maybe it was just the unexpectedness of Jubilee invading his personal space that pinged a bit on Doug. Or most likely it was her deft skewering of his personality and motivations, like she saw right through him. He was silent for a moment, then turned to the laptop, welcoming the distraction.

"All right, let's see what we've got," he murmured, tapping at the keys. "Hm. Anonymous proxy server with rotating IP addresses...they're being quick about it, but still a pretty basic trick." He pored backward through the files, accessing a utility he'd built into all of X-Force's computers for ease of use. "Looks like they're using an ISP here in New York," he said after completing his analysis. That mesh with what you came up with?"

"Yeah, that's what I got as well. I've been trying to decide whether I want to do something sneaky to make their life hell, or simply deny them their ability to use the Internet. Thoughts?" she asked, leaning back against him with a sigh.

She wasn't entirely taking advantage of his position as her friend, but sometimes she just felt like she needed to feel someone nearby or start screaming and never stop.

"Little from column A, little from column B?" Doug suggested with a shrug. He was always up for a bit of internet vigilantism, when it came down to it. "What'd you have in mind? And why are you tracking these guys anyway?" He draped an arm over Jubilee's shoulders. Not that he felt protective per se, as Jubilee would probably kick his ass for even the tacit assumption that she couldn't take care of herself, but he did feel close to her. She wasn't really taking advantage of anything.

"Did I ever tell you anything about China? Or, um, how I ended up in Madripoor?" she asked, trying to think back to when she'd first come back to New York. She honestly couldn't recall who knew about that part of her life and who didn't. Remy, for certain, Pete Wisdom as well and Emma simply due to the fact she was a telepath and Jubilee was only learning now to be quiet.

The rest could have found out, it wasn't any secret if you went digging for it. Heck, she'd probably blurted out the story at some stage in a drunken fit of maudlin honesty. Something she'd worked herself out of, much to Remy's relief, no doubt. You weren't much of a spy if you blabbed everything the moment you got a few drinks in you.

"Not...quite so much?" Doug said. She'd let out bits and drabs of things in passing, and he had a few suspicions, but he'd never gotten anything like the whole story from her. He squeezed gently with his arm around her shoulder, a reassuring gesture. "If you feel up to telling me?" he said questioningly.

"I had this boyfriend, James, another drug dealer. I went all the way to China and I still go involved with just another asshole loser." Jubilee noted, leaning into the squeeze. "Anyway, I got caught eventually, and I gave up the people I was working for in order to get out of it. For a bit there I figured that I'd gotten away with it, but then I wake up on some ship and I figure James probably drugged me. So yeah, I got sold and ended up in Madripoor but only after they'd half starved me on the ship over. I needed food, and somewhere off the street. Tourists mostly, guys who wouldn't report having their wallets lifted after a night with me. Anyway, it doesn't matter much these days, it's all water under the bridge. But, and this is the big thing, I'm not about to let people get sold like I was sold, not if I can do something about it."

Jubilee closed her eyes, breathing deeply around the panicked feeling in her gut. She didn't talk about these things, not except with Sofia, and that was only because she had to in order to keep her job.

Jubilee's story sounded uncomfortably like the sorts of things he'd found out about Telford Porter from hiring Vanessa and X-Factor to investigate the man. He wanted to tell Jubilee that he wouldn't let that happen either, but words seemed inadequate to express what he was feeling. "Count me in, too," he said huskily.

Jubilee moved her head slightly, stretching to kiss him lightly on the cheek before settling back into place against him, tapping a few keys on the laptop to save her current files and searches. "Good, because I think I'm gonna need the help."