Quentin & Jean, Thursday evening

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

Jean helps Quentin get in touch with his feminine side while deftly rejecting his advances.


Even though he'd had the place for months, Quentin's suite remained bare. No decorations, no furniture besides the basic items Xavier provided, almost no indication to anyone who passed by the open door that anyone lived there. Were a shirtless Quentin not huddled over the small kitchen table, Euro synthpop blasting from his phone, it would have appeared to be yet another of the many post–M-Day uninhabited spaces.

The table was also mostly bare except for a small collection of various bottles. Nail polish and acetone, upon closer inspection, which also revealed Quentin having a difficult time properly applying them. Curses of frustration could be heard punctuating the music.

"I'd ask how things were going but that's the fifth 'fuck' I've heard in the last 30 seconds," a voice spoke up that belonged to Jean, who was leaning against the door frame. She smiled, though her expression was curious, her arms folded.

"The door was open," she said, motioning behind her as if to illustrate.

"Everything okay?"

Quentin had another choice curse forming in his mouth, emphasized with a growing telekinetic force bolt, when he identified his intruder and let both drop. "Shit is dumb," he said to her, as if that were a sufficient answer to her question. He held up his left hand; each nail was messily painted a different color, the drying globs on polish on his nails (and fingers) suggesting aborted attempts at multiple coats. A few stray streaks of color adorned the tattoo on his chest, too. It would not have been unfair to compare his appearance to a child with fingerpaints.

Jean had to take a moment before speaking, as she was trying to stifle her laughter. She knew he was trying, though. She was mostly laughing at the colorful image.

"Yeah, it can take some finesse," she said, glancing over the paint selection before thoughtfully holding out her hand to examine her own, unpainted fingernails .

"Mind if I join you? Its been awhile, but I could give you some pointers. If you're up for it." Being a surgeon meant steady hands.

Quentin gestured with his undecorated hand at the chair opposite him, which scooted back a few inches under his telekinetic command. He then poured some nail polisher onto a cotton ball and set to clean off his mess. "Mothers don't teach their little boys these things," he said venomously. "She nearly exploded when I came home with earrings."

Settling down into a chair, Jean reached out to pick up a glittery gold polish that resembled the patina of a trophy or a piece of jewelry. "Yikes. She sounds delightful. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Parents can be...single-minded, and set in their ways of how they think things should be," she said, a note of familiarity in her voice.

"No matter how wrong they are."

She opened up the bottle, then held out her hand. The brush floated up and began to draw careful, even strokes over the nail on her index finger.

"Which color and finger would you like to start with?"

"Lucia Quire is a grade A cun . . .tinuous wellspring of frustration for me." Quentin had the good sense to look at least mildly ashamed of the slur, even if he thought it the best word in the English language to describe his mother. Finishing with one finger, he took another nail polish remover-soaked cotton ball and started on the next one. "I was going through all of them to see which I liked the most. If any of them. I don't even know. I just picked these ones because they don't clash with my hair."

Jean's eyebrow rose before her lips curled into a faint smirk when he caught himself, and she made a noise of approval as she nodded toward the nail polish

"Nice choices. You seem to have an eye for color" she mused.

"I like the purple, myself. Or maybe the green."

Quentin shrugged. "Yeah, well. Gay men and design, you know." He tapped the bottle of mint green polish before returning to cleaning his hands. "You think pink and green won't make me look like some 25-year-old's Pinterest?"

"Would you care whether it did or not?" Jean said, finishing up on another finger.

"I'd say it was more hipster than Pinterest, though."

"Is there even any difference anymore?" Quentin asked disdainfully. But he was smiling, or as close to smiling as he ever did in front of another person, because of Jean's rhetorical question. She knew him so well.

Laughing, Jean floated a black bottle of nail polish over toward her.

"Depends on who you ask. There are apparently many subtle layers," she said, then tilted her head thoughtfully.

"What those are I have no idea."

She glanced over. "You're not wearing flannel or a beard so I think that's out."

"Pfft. Lesbian chic isn't my look, either." Quentin soon finished cleaning his nails and then, to relieve himself from the dryness of the solvent, rubbed a squirt of lotion all over his hands. "All right, so how the hell do I do this like someone who doesn't have Parkinson's?"

Putting her brush back into the nailpolish bottle, Jean let her first few nails dry as she plucked one of Quentin's color choices off the counter.

"The key is making three careful, thin strokes that cover the nail evenly. I'm not going to lie, you may mess up a little a couple more times until we get it right. But that's okay," she said with a smile.

"We've got plenty of nail polish and acetone."

The brush unscrewed itself from the bottle, and Jean nodded to his hand.

"Lay your hand flat on the table. With your other hand, keeping it steady, go ahead and try to apply the first stroke. Think of it like you're holding a highlighter and you're trying to highlight a word and you want to stay in the lines."

Quentin did as instructed, starting with his left thumb. The analogy was helpful; he saw his fingers as inspirational and thought-provoking text from Between the World and Me, The New Jim Crow, and the Lehnsherr Manifesto that he would want to recall later. It came out much cleaner this time. "Huh. Look at that."

Jean glanced over her shoulder, smiling broadly. "Fantastic. Good job," she said, she nodded toward his hand.

"Alright...try it again on the next one. The others are a little smaller so just be patient. Once we get to your other hand we're going to try it telekinetically."

"You don't think it's weird that I'm doing this, then?" he asked as he carefully applied his index finger and then started on his favorite finger of all.

Her reply was immediate, no hesitancy attached. "Nope," she said, shrugging.

"As long as you're not running around naked or wearing something offensive like a Nazi shirt it doesn't bother me."

"Are you saying you don't want to see me naked?" Quentin asked, shooting her a wicked little smirk. "Like, that's as bad as sporting a swastika? Fucking rude, Jean."

Jean stared at him with an expression of what could only be described as the boredom of someone who had heard something for the 1,000th time.

"Pretty much," she said, letting a faint smirk slip after a moment.

"I see enough naked people daily. Don't need anymore."

She continued on painting the fingernails on her other hand telekinetically. It was easier to get things right without having to risk smudging the nail polish.

Quentin shrugged as he finished up and admired his left hand. It was a really good color for him, he thought contentedly. "Yeah, but you've never seen me naked."

Jean glanced up, tilting her head with a patient, yet definitive smile. "Still not interested, Q," she said as she sat there for a few moments, letting her nails dry.

"Your words say one thing, you face says another." He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, sucking in his gut a bit to hide his winter weight. "So. What're you gonna show me next?"

Letting out a laugh of amusement, Jean nodded to the brush.

"Go ahead and try to pull the brush out of the bottle telekinetically. Remember how we learned about force fields? The same thing is going to apply here, except on a smaller level. And you're doing it on the nail polish and not yourself. The trick is to keep the polish contained except for where you want to use it. Gravity's going to want to pull it downward, but you can't let that happen. We'll start with that first. Since your microTK's pretty well advanced you'll do great."

Unscrewing the cap was a simple challenge; Quentin had to grab hold of the bottle and the cap separately so spinning the cap didn't just rotate the whole bottle. And then lifting the cap and brush was child's play, too. The real test was keeping the extra polish from dripping off onto the table and then, even harder, applying it in a single layer to his right thumbnail. His whole right thumb ended up green instead.

Jean looked sympathetic but undeterred. She smiled encouragingly, then nodded. "Good start. You got the cap off, and you kept control of the polish. That's really good. Baby steps," she said, grabbing the bottle of acetone and a cotton ball to wipe the polish off, then pulled off a paper towel and set it under the table.

"Okay, let's try again. This time we're going to work on the other side of the equation, just focusing on the brush strokes. Don't worry about making sure the polish doesn't drip. It's like a puzzle. You have to know what the pieces are, and in this case, what they feel like, so you can put them together to make the picture."

Were she anyone else, he'd have yanked back his hand to clean himself up. Instead, a combination of embarrassment and arousal kept his expression neutral, and he only withdrew his hand when she let go. "I can do it," he insisted, and he telekinetically reached for the brush again.

With a tight grip on the cap, and pressed the brush against the lip of the bottle to remove extra polish so he would not have to worry about it dripping. When the brush floated over to his hand, he held it in place for a second before pressing it with a feather touch against his nail, leaving behind an incomplete streak. But at least it was only on the nail and not skin. It was almost like struggling to control the claw from one of those rigged arcade games. Maneuver just half an inch too far, and you'd get nothing but lost quarters.

It took a couple of minutes, and sweat dripped down Quentin's face from the exertion, but he did it. He leaned back arrogantly in his seat, like he had just created the greatest work of art man had ever seen.

A proud smile blossomed across Jean lips and she clapped her hands. "Bravo," she said.

"It takes a lot of practice, but it's totally satisfying when you're able to pull it off. Can't say I'll ever try anything dangerous like surgery this way, but, knowing this place....its good to be prepared."

Quentin cocked his head at her. "Why not? Think of what you could do that no flatscan surgeon ever could. You could, like, remove tumors with more precision. Laproscopic surgery without any of the expensive machines and materials. Just by yourself, you could reduce medical costs by whole levels of magnitude."

Jean was silent a moment, her expression thoughtful. "I just wouldn't," she said quietly.

Because one slip, one lapse of control, and people could die.

She wasn't ready. For all of her finite control she wasn't ready for that. She could use her powers to harm, to rend and pulverize, but when it came to healing she found it harder to put the trust in herself for something so delicate, despite the potential ability to do it. She preferred her own two hands.

"And I'd rather you not use the word...flatscan. At least not around me."

He eyed her thoughtfully as she spoke. Her mind was too well guarded for him to pick up her thoughts, but her body language and tone suggested her discomfort with his advice. A moment of silence passed as the brush applied a layer of polish to his right index finger.

"Fine," he said. "Whatever. But I think it's a mistake." Both the refusal to incorporate her powers into her work and her refusal to incorporate the slur into his vocabulary.

The cap opened on the black nail polish, and Jean grabbed a piece of paper, gently folding it over her now-dry gold nails save for the tips. The brush then started to gently run across the top, making a black line that resembled a French manicure.

"Someday," she allowed, then added with a faint smile.

"But I'm still not keen on that word."

She knew it was an option she needed to explore more, to practice on. But she was still working on honing her telepathy. It was becoming more and more used in nearly two years than it had her entire life, to the point where she lived in the Box at least once or twice a week at night from all the telepathic bleed occasionally creeping in. She didn't much advertise that notion, though. Work still got done. Her time was limited, and sometimes she had to focus on one thing or the other to get better at, telekinesis or telepathy.

Pulling the paper away, she showed Quentin her index finger. "What do you think?"

"Clever," he replied, idly realizing that his own basic colors looked like shit next to what Jean had done. But he'd done it, and it looked good enough that he wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen. "You can teach me make up tips next."

Jean gave no look of surprise or hesitation, instead starting on her next finger nail. "There's a multi-step process to that one. Depends on what you want. Are we talking full on night out, natural and hardly noticeable, just eyeshadow, just eyeliner, or both eyeliner and eyeshadow? Either way we can take it one step at a time," she said. She glanced up apprasingly.

"Blue eyeshadow would really make your eyes pop. We'd just have to pick one with a pinky undertone to make it not clash with your hair."

"I'm not looking to do drag," Quentin said, snorting. "Just, like, a classy whore. Can you do that?"

Quirking a brow with bewildered amusement, Jean laughed. "I'll...do my best?" she said.