Log: Jubilee and Kurt

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Jubilee goes to see Kurt, and to find out whether he really understands what being with someone who does the job she does means.



Jubilee paused at the door to Kurt's suite, taking a measuring breath before she dropped the masks she'd worn the past week as part of her job and knocked on his door. What Remy had said to her about not hiding her fears, not amongst her compatriots had hit close, and while she'd tried over the years to truly drop her barriers around them she still had such a long way to go. She was willing to try though, and even if it took something like a post it note on her computer screen to remind her, she'd get there.

It included this however, not being anyone but herself with Kurt, including explaining to him in graphic details just what it might mean to do the job she'd chosen to devote her life to. If he could handle that then great, it was a solid start to what would hopefully be a good relationship. If he couldn't handle those truths then also good, if slightly more depressing, as that would mean she'd headed things off at the pass before getting her feelings involved beyond an initial attraction and the possibility for more.

He opened the door and smiled in obvious pleasure to see her, standing aside to clear the way into the suite. "I was not expecting to see you here this morning, Jubilee, but of course you are welcome." As the door closed, he leaned down to give her a quick kiss. Jubilee leaned into the kiss for a moment, before she resolutely pushed herself away and walked past him into the suite.

"I figured since I'm back from my little trip, and you're back from yours we could talk a little bit about exactly what it is we're doing," she said, taking a curious look around now that she was inside. She hadn't been in his suite before and the instincts trained into her over the past few years were definitely cataloging the contents on display. "Dating wise, that is. Expectations, ya know?"

There wasn't a lot to see - Kurt had never got out of the habit of living simple, so mostly the shared area only contained the basic furnishings it had had when he first arrived. A coffee table, a couch, a single painting on the wall, little more.

He nodded and gestured to the couch. "That seems sensible. Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and we will talk."

"Comfortable is probably going to consist of a really long, hot shower and a good solid eight hours sleep," Jubilee replied but she sank onto the couch with a sigh of relief. "I haven't had a lot of chance to rest since we got back from Genosha."

"Then as comfortable as you can be for now", he agreed, settling onto the couch beside her - close, but not so close as to deliberately be distracting her. "And hopefully soon things will settle down enough that you can have that good sleep."

"There'll just be another crisis," Jubilee noted, entirely aware of both the amount of cynicism and the amount of exhaustion present in that statement. "There's always something, somewhere. I guess that's sort of a start to what we've gotta talk about? I don't get to not take my work home with me when the day ends. Like, I know you don't always get that either with being an X-man and all. But what I do, the whole spy thing? There's stuff that I have to do on a day to day basis that would make most relationships go down in a burning heap even before they got out the door."

"Our work does tend to follow us home more than we would like", Kurt said with a regretful nod. "And I know, generally speaking, some of the things your work requires that mine does not - remember my sister does that same work, though she does not tell me anything of the details."

"Like, that's just the thing, see? If we're gonna do this, I need to be clear with you about what it is I do. Like, totally lay all cards out on the table style of clear, and that's not gonna be nice to hear," Jubilee noted, reaching out to pluck a cushion from the couch, hugging it against her chest. "So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm going to give you a choice right now. We can like, end this right here and walk away as two people who had a good enough time but it just didn't work out. Or, I can tell you everything. Thing about this first choice is it means you and I can stay friends, even if that's all. If I tell you stuff that you don't like, things that make you not want to be anywhere near me? Well, that's like, scorched Earth, yeah? That means neither of us gets to take anything back. So that's your choice, Fuzzy."

Kurt gave her a long considering look, not rushing into any quick answer. The silence drew out into minutes before he finally answered, meeting her eyes straight on, "It is not so very easy to make me scorch the earth with anybody who fights on my side, and I have always believed in honesty. Tell me."

"You know how in the movies and books there's always this loveable rogue who totally wins over all the people with their sheer cool factor, and stuff?" Jubilee started, keeping her eyes fixed on Kurt's. She wanted him to know that whatever she said here, she wasn't ashamed of what she did for a living, and she wasn't about to hide from him, ever. "Well, it's not like that at all, or not totally like that. I mean, I'm pretty loveable but you know, tuxedos are only for special occasions. I'm a thief, is what I'm trying to say, and a damn good one. Not as good as Remy, but I'm still pretty new to it. I've got some years to learn all the ins and outs. Fact is, I'm not just pulling in a salary from Snow Valley, anything I happen to acquire in the course of duty, I usually get a cut of."

Kurt considered this and nodded slowly. "But the course of your duty, as I understand it, almost always involves organisations who, one might say, deserve to suffer a few losses. You do not take from individuals' homes, or at least not individuals who are not heavily involved in the other side." He smiled slightly and added, "And, well, in my younger days I was known to cheat tourists out of their money, which might even be less justifiable."

"Fuzzy, that's just the easy mode of what I do," Jubilee replied, exhaustion seeping past the walls she put up even when she was trying to be open, the ones that she'd worn for so long that it seemed impossible that they'd ever be breached. "You know the other thing in movies? The question they sometimes ask about whether you'd be willing to kill one innocent person in order to save a thousand? I'm the person that kills that innocent, and sometimes it's not even to save a thousand, sometimes it's so few people that it's a 1:1 ratio."

She didn't prevaricate, she didn't make note of the fact that most of the time the people she might have to kill were truly scum, and deserved to die. She didn't note that most of the time not killing people was what the job was all about, and it was only on rare occasions that it came to actually taking a life. She wanted to make sure he knew the true limits of what being with her meant, and this was really only the start of the equation.

His hand rose to gently cup the side of her face as her exhaustion started to become clear, and he spoke very seriously. "I know that the nature of your work will sometimes bring hard decisions, whether those decisions are yours or are hard orders to follow. But I also know that you would not kill an innocent for no reason. However low the ratio of benefit it brings, that death would in the end be necessary, because you are not a monster like Moreau. And so I might mourn for that, and for your having to do it as I would for Amanda, but turn away from you? No."

Tears stung as she blinked and leaned into the hand that cupped her cheek. This man... who was he to so easily forgive her? Who was she that she wanted desperately to believe forgiveness was so easily given and taken up? She breathed deeply, taking in his smell as she took in the comfort he offered and continued, wanting to get it all out before her courage left her.

"It's not the only thing though, that's just the 'you're a horrible person and you should feel horrible' stuff," Jubilee noted, hands gripping her legs to keep from fidgeting. "There's the specific, 'this makes you a really shitty relationship choice' stuff. There's times when I've got to use my body too. I don't just mean flirting either, sometimes the only way to a target is through fucking them."

"Oh, Jubilee", he said softly, but with no condemnation or anything but deep sadness in his voice. "I do not think you are a horrible person. The truly horrible people, and I have met a few, do not feel horrible when they do terrible things, and do not even do them because they must but because they can. As for the using your body..."

He trailed off for a moment. "Bear with me, please, I want to... to say this right. The physical is the physical, and I do not say it does not matter, of course it does, but to me, the physical is the least important part of a relationship. Honesty matters far more. If the job requires you to sleep with a target, and the job cannot be completed without that, then you must, and when you come home, I will be waiting here for when you need someone who cares, as I do and those men, I am sure, do not."

He was still meeting her gaze steadily. "You will do what you must, and I trust you", with emphasis on 'trust', "not to do anything gratuitously. All I ask is that you trust me in turn, enough to tell me when you are hurting, and if the time comes that you find you want to be with another man, whoever he may be, that you tell me."

"I can't ever promise you normal," she noted, knowing that after the breakup with Doug she would never go looking for that again. It wasn't in her and the strain of trying to pretend that it was had just been yet another nail into the coffin of that relationship. She would never make the same mistake again, and she needed Kurt to know what he was really accepting here. "One day, you may just never hear from me again, and you may never know why. Can you deal with that?"

"Jubilee, I am a circus child who no one would ever mistake for baseline, living in a perpetual target for anyone with a mutant-related axe to grind. If I wanted normal", he said with dry amusement, "I would be a long, long way from here and possibly I would still never find it. We are who we are and that brings what it will with it. If I never hear from you again, then details aside... I will know why."

"Kurt, I really need you to be sure about this," Jubilee replied, not sure if he understood just how hard it was for her to accept that he would be okay with all this, just like that. "I don't want to be wrong again, I can't be. I really need you to think about it for more then just a second. Can you do that for me? Just, like, give it a day or something and really consider what being with me is gonna mean? If you're like, totally cool after that, then fine but just give it that long so I know you've thought about it."

"If I do that, if I really truly take a day to consider in depth", he said after a moment, carefully, "and tell you then that I still want you, are you sure you will be sure? Because I do not know how else I will be able to convince you except by... giving it a try and proving to you I will not run away."

"I think a combination of both," Jubilee admitted, leaning forward to brush his lips with her own, before standing up and grabbing the bag she'd dropped earlier. "Just give it a day, yeah? Then like, call me and we'll just work it out as we go from there."

"A day", he promised, standing in turn. Then, evidently on impulse, he set his hands on her shoulders, leaned down and kissed her again -not hard or passionately, but slowly and with all the tenderness he'd come to feel for her in and since Genosha.

Jubilee leaned into the kiss, and traced his lips gently with her own. She wanted so much to stay, and figure out just where this would go but she'd promised herself, and so her hand traveled once across his jaw before she pulled reluctantly away and left.