This Old House: Jean and Angelo
Apr. 26th, 2020 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsJean and Angelo do their part in spring cleaning by converting the Professor's old paper files to digital.
Jean eyed the stack of files that were piled up neatly on the desk in Charles' old office. He was always a big fan of the paper method of keeping files, but in the interest of trying to make things easier to find they had begun the process of converting those files to digital. The word was still out whether or not the paper files themselves would be shredded or sent to Charles on Muir Island. Probably the latter. "Okay, I have A through..." she flipped through the pages. "M. How about you?"
“I guess I’ll take N to Z”, Angelo said easily, picking up his stack. “These are all for scanning, right?”
Jean grimaced thoughtfully. "Yep," she said with a smile, trying to sound encouraging and exciting but fully aware of how fake it sounded. "Charles spent a decade or two putting these together. It should take us far less time to get them scanned. I hope." She clapped her hands together. "This'll be great."
"I'd say so, depending how quick the scanner is, and it's a pretty new one." He grinned. "You know most people wouldn't think this was fun?"
"Ah," Jean said, holding up a finger. "But there are two scanners. I busted one out from the medlab for the occasion."
She then smirked. "And fun is such a strong word." A moment or two passed, then she relented.
"Okay it's kinda fun. We are such nerds." "Guilty as charged", he agreed, turning towards the nearest scanner. "But that just means we won't get bored doing this." Jean grinned. "Why would we? Especially when there's reading material."
"Oh, I also brought supplies," she added, pulling out a two beers, a bag of chocolate, a box of bandaids and some antibiotic ointment from the dark blue and brown backpack that had become her purse.
"Excellent!" He reached for one of the beers immediately. "Expecting papercuts, then?"
"Never hurts to be prepared," Jean said with a shrug, grabbing one of the chocolates. "With this many stacks of papers, the odds get a bit better for it to happen." Leaning back in her chair, she booted up one of the computers that had the scanner. "Do you ever miss being in school?"
"I was always in trouble when I was in school here", he said, laughing. "So not that part. Other parts and college, kinda."
"I missed the idea of high school. Most of mine was spent at Muir. But college was pretty great," Jean said, flipping through the files until she got who she was looking for. "Wow," she said with a grin, opening up the file to show a picture of high school aged Angelo. "Look at you. Digging the early 2000s hairdo."
“Oh my God.” Angelo made a playful grab for the picture. “Now I remember why I shaved it all off.”
Jean laughed. "So which Backstreet Boy were you going for? Or was Nsync more your style?" she said.
“Neither, really, but I definitely wouldn’t have gone for the Backstreet Boys.”
"Aw, I was torn between both," Jean said with a point, motioning for the picture back before putting his file back in the stack. As she flicked through the files one made her pause and she leaned in.
"Who is...Fabian Colbert? Is he a relative to---" she opened the file. "Oh. Wow. Okay."
That got a resigned look. “Should’ve guessed that would be in there. He hates that name, I didn’t even know it until we were doing the wedding paperwork.”
"It's very....romance novel protagonist," Jean admitted, then added helpfully. "But it's not awful. Still, Jean-Phillippe's a good name too. The whole thing sounds regal. And French, of course." She glanced back down at the file toward his picture. "Wow, he pretty much looks the same too. I've had a theory the mutation makes cells age more slowly."
"You could be on to something there." He peered over at the picture. "Not for everybody, maybe, but for some."
Jean laughed. "It'd explain a lot," she said as she got to work scanning the files. "Got anybody interesting over there?"
"I've got Wanda." He grinned and picked up a piece of paper. "She really wasn't happy with her dad."
Jean arched a brow. "Are there psychological profiles in there?" she said curiously.
"Probably. I know a lot of my class had them - but this is something she wrote herself."
"Like a diary entry or...?" Jean said, suddenly feeling a bit guilty.
"I don't think diaries would be in the files", Angelo said with a quick head shake. "It's a class paper, but she had things to get off her chest."
"Right," Jean said, relieved. She had a feeling they wouldn't be either but sometimes Charles was meticulous. Okay, not that meticulous.
"Forget I said that. Well, given who her father is I imagine she would. When was it?"
"It doesn't say the year, but I guess when she was a teenager? Old enough to have a boyfriend."
Jean paused midway through scanning. "Wait, boyfriend? Who?" she said.
"Uh, it looks like... Everett? Her dad didn't approve."
"Oh!" Jean nodded in remembrance. "I had almost forgotten that she dated him. I imagine there weren't that many people that he did want her to date. Unless they were terroristicly pro-mutant."
"Maybe, but only some of them. I can't imagine anybody's dad being happy with them dating Toad, even if for some reason they wanted to."
Biting her lip, Jean tried to look civil. "I'm sure there's someone for everyone," she allowed, realizing it didn't seem as genuine as she'd like.
With a smirk, she moved onto the next file. "Oh, here's Marie-Ange," she said. Her eyes immediately drifted toward the giant red Fs on her report card. "Well somebody must not have liked self-defense."
Angelo laughed. "We were in school the same time. She didn't do bad in that class, she just never showed up. Or if she did, she sat in a corner and wouldn't take part."
Jean quirked a brow curiously. "Why? Her other grades seemed decent."
"She had philosophical objections to anything like being taught to fight, I think." A crooked grin. "Kind of ironic now."
Letting out a laugh, Jean started to scan the files. "Definitely an understatement," she said.
"I mean, I don't think she turned into a martial artist but she got over that pretty quickly." She scanned the files, popping off some of the staples with the staple puller. "So who else was in your class?"
"Uh, of the people that are still around..." He counted on his fingers. "Amanda, Doug, Jono, John... I think that's about it. Artie was there, of course, but younger."
"And just as angry?" Jean said, less joking more almost a touch sad. "Sounds like an interesting group. I only really crossed paths with Kitty and Haller when I was younger."
"Not quite as angry", Angelo said a little more quietly. "That was before things happened. And yeah, we were - interesting. We called ourselves the Bad Kids Club - except maybe Doug, he was a good kid."
Jean smiled. "Gotta have that one outlier, I guess. So were you guys still Generation X like this group, though? Feels apropos."
"Nothing that official. The place was really a school back then - a small one, sure, but a working school. So we weren't a team as such."
"Hm," Jean murmured wistfully then turned back to her work. "Must've been nice." There wasn't as much in the folder as she thought, especially with a scanner that you could feed things into. Making short work of it, she spotted a familiar name among the next up and paused. "Uh...maybe we should switch? I see mine and um....Not sure if I want to see what Charles wrote about me." Actually she did, but that was the problem.
He glanced over at her and nodded. "I shouldn't think there'd be any surprises in there, but sure. We can switch."
"Thanks," Jean said, handing hers over. It was a little thicker than most but not by much.
"But if you want to take a peek at yours I can give it," she offered.
Angelo chuckled. "Again, there probably won't be any surprises. I remember all too well what I got up to then... but that was another life. On the other hand... maybe it would be nice to see what they really thought. They never did kick me out, after all."
"Charles always had a soft spot for the outcasts and the loner kids," Jean said, handing him the file as well. "It's like a secondary power."
"He sent Scott all the way to LA to find me", he said with a fond smile, taking it. "And he tried to fix me, but never so hard I'd run."
"He knew my dad. I had um....had some problems with my powers after my friend died. Charles tried to help. But my dad got jealous of Charles because he was helping and my dad wasn't able to, so he decided Scotland was great and I should move there. He said it was because he wanted to protect me and us should anyone find out and maybe it was but...It took a while for me get over that."
"If he sent you to Muir, you probably still had some contact with Charles?" he guessed. "Since he and Moira always worked together."
"I did, through Cerebro. Charles still tutored me. I finally convinced my dad that I could have two father figures in my life and my dad realized I still needed training," Jean said with a shrug as she moved on to the next file.
"I didn't really have that problem." He was looking at his file. "My dad died when I was little, and for a while after I came here, my mom didn't know where I was."
Jean glanced over. "Why not?"
"I ran away. My manifestation didn't go so well." He turned one hand palm up on the folder. "Not because of her, but I couldn't go home."
"Were you afraid of what she'd think?" Jean said. “Kinda”, he admitted. “But more afraid of what people might do to her.”
"Definitely a valid concern," Jean said. "I've often had the same thought about my own family."
“Do you see much of them?” he asked quietly. Jean smiled. "When I can. I get so busy with the hospital and being an X-Man that it's mostly only on holidays now." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "It's a nice reminder that people still have normal lives."
"I guess it would be. Normal lives with normal things to worry about, not like us." He grinned crookedly and looked back at the next folder. "Oh hey, here's Amanda's."
Turning with curiosity, Jean quirked a brow. "Alright, this is getting good," she said with a smile.
"I've heard a few stories. Is there a picture?"
He picked it out and held it up. "Her hair was better than mine."
Jean's eyes widened and she grinned broadly. "Wait--No. This doesn't even look like Amanda. She leaned into that goth phase hard."
"You have no idea", he said with a grin. "Her students wouldn't believe it if I told them."
"I still hardly believe it and I'm looking at the photo," Jean said with a laugh. "Did she have black hair when you first met her? So what did you guys think when she went blonde?"
"The blonde's actually natural, like the rest of her birth family. She just stopped dyeing it - and I thought it looked kind of good."
Jean smiled. "It's always interesting to see the phases of life people go through," she said, then nodded toward the file.
"So is there anything fun in there besides the different hair color?"
"Bound to be, but most of it she wouldn't want me to share." He was holding on to the file. "Let me see if there's anything not sensitive."
Jean's smile faded quickly as a note of discomfort flickered across her eyes and she rubbed the back of her head. "Actually. You know....It's okay. Nevermind. I shouldn't have intruded," she said. She glanced back to her own stack of files. "I should....get back to scanning."
Angelo blinked at her. "Hey, you know, it's just... I was there the first time so I know things she wouldn't want anyone to hear unless it was from her. You OK?"
Silent for a couple of moments, Jean closed the file she was holding. "Yeah, I know. That's um--why it feels like intruding," Jean said with a slow nod.
"Since I wasn't there the first time. You guys have this shared experience that I'll never have. It was fun to hear about the silly teenage things you all went through but this...I guess it reminded me of all the bad things too." Jean shrugged.
"Amanda and I aren't that close. Hell, for a little while we were...sort of enemies. So I probably won't ever hear about her past from her. I guess what you said just....reminded me of that. About the outsider part. How I could have been at the school and I wanted to be and I...hate my dad for denying it to me. I could've been somewhere with people like me instead of stuck on a tiny Scottish island. And now I'm looking through these files with you and I feel guilty for reading these private moments I probably shouldn't." She looked down, blinking with an awkward, embarrassed smile.
"So um...yeah."
"I can see why you'd resent it, but try not to hate him", he said quietly, then changed the subject. "Most of the stuff in these files probably isn't that private, either, and I can tell you more of the stupid stuff we did if you want."
Staring down at the stack of well worn files for a moment, Jean glanced over with a faint smile.
"Okay, sure."
"Well, there was this one time with Rogue's car...".
Jean eyed the stack of files that were piled up neatly on the desk in Charles' old office. He was always a big fan of the paper method of keeping files, but in the interest of trying to make things easier to find they had begun the process of converting those files to digital. The word was still out whether or not the paper files themselves would be shredded or sent to Charles on Muir Island. Probably the latter. "Okay, I have A through..." she flipped through the pages. "M. How about you?"
“I guess I’ll take N to Z”, Angelo said easily, picking up his stack. “These are all for scanning, right?”
Jean grimaced thoughtfully. "Yep," she said with a smile, trying to sound encouraging and exciting but fully aware of how fake it sounded. "Charles spent a decade or two putting these together. It should take us far less time to get them scanned. I hope." She clapped her hands together. "This'll be great."
"I'd say so, depending how quick the scanner is, and it's a pretty new one." He grinned. "You know most people wouldn't think this was fun?"
"Ah," Jean said, holding up a finger. "But there are two scanners. I busted one out from the medlab for the occasion."
She then smirked. "And fun is such a strong word." A moment or two passed, then she relented.
"Okay it's kinda fun. We are such nerds." "Guilty as charged", he agreed, turning towards the nearest scanner. "But that just means we won't get bored doing this." Jean grinned. "Why would we? Especially when there's reading material."
"Oh, I also brought supplies," she added, pulling out a two beers, a bag of chocolate, a box of bandaids and some antibiotic ointment from the dark blue and brown backpack that had become her purse.
"Excellent!" He reached for one of the beers immediately. "Expecting papercuts, then?"
"Never hurts to be prepared," Jean said with a shrug, grabbing one of the chocolates. "With this many stacks of papers, the odds get a bit better for it to happen." Leaning back in her chair, she booted up one of the computers that had the scanner. "Do you ever miss being in school?"
"I was always in trouble when I was in school here", he said, laughing. "So not that part. Other parts and college, kinda."
"I missed the idea of high school. Most of mine was spent at Muir. But college was pretty great," Jean said, flipping through the files until she got who she was looking for. "Wow," she said with a grin, opening up the file to show a picture of high school aged Angelo. "Look at you. Digging the early 2000s hairdo."
“Oh my God.” Angelo made a playful grab for the picture. “Now I remember why I shaved it all off.”
Jean laughed. "So which Backstreet Boy were you going for? Or was Nsync more your style?" she said.
“Neither, really, but I definitely wouldn’t have gone for the Backstreet Boys.”
"Aw, I was torn between both," Jean said with a point, motioning for the picture back before putting his file back in the stack. As she flicked through the files one made her pause and she leaned in.
"Who is...Fabian Colbert? Is he a relative to---" she opened the file. "Oh. Wow. Okay."
That got a resigned look. “Should’ve guessed that would be in there. He hates that name, I didn’t even know it until we were doing the wedding paperwork.”
"It's very....romance novel protagonist," Jean admitted, then added helpfully. "But it's not awful. Still, Jean-Phillippe's a good name too. The whole thing sounds regal. And French, of course." She glanced back down at the file toward his picture. "Wow, he pretty much looks the same too. I've had a theory the mutation makes cells age more slowly."
"You could be on to something there." He peered over at the picture. "Not for everybody, maybe, but for some."
Jean laughed. "It'd explain a lot," she said as she got to work scanning the files. "Got anybody interesting over there?"
"I've got Wanda." He grinned and picked up a piece of paper. "She really wasn't happy with her dad."
Jean arched a brow. "Are there psychological profiles in there?" she said curiously.
"Probably. I know a lot of my class had them - but this is something she wrote herself."
"Like a diary entry or...?" Jean said, suddenly feeling a bit guilty.
"I don't think diaries would be in the files", Angelo said with a quick head shake. "It's a class paper, but she had things to get off her chest."
"Right," Jean said, relieved. She had a feeling they wouldn't be either but sometimes Charles was meticulous. Okay, not that meticulous.
"Forget I said that. Well, given who her father is I imagine she would. When was it?"
"It doesn't say the year, but I guess when she was a teenager? Old enough to have a boyfriend."
Jean paused midway through scanning. "Wait, boyfriend? Who?" she said.
"Uh, it looks like... Everett? Her dad didn't approve."
"Oh!" Jean nodded in remembrance. "I had almost forgotten that she dated him. I imagine there weren't that many people that he did want her to date. Unless they were terroristicly pro-mutant."
"Maybe, but only some of them. I can't imagine anybody's dad being happy with them dating Toad, even if for some reason they wanted to."
Biting her lip, Jean tried to look civil. "I'm sure there's someone for everyone," she allowed, realizing it didn't seem as genuine as she'd like.
With a smirk, she moved onto the next file. "Oh, here's Marie-Ange," she said. Her eyes immediately drifted toward the giant red Fs on her report card. "Well somebody must not have liked self-defense."
Angelo laughed. "We were in school the same time. She didn't do bad in that class, she just never showed up. Or if she did, she sat in a corner and wouldn't take part."
Jean quirked a brow curiously. "Why? Her other grades seemed decent."
"She had philosophical objections to anything like being taught to fight, I think." A crooked grin. "Kind of ironic now."
Letting out a laugh, Jean started to scan the files. "Definitely an understatement," she said.
"I mean, I don't think she turned into a martial artist but she got over that pretty quickly." She scanned the files, popping off some of the staples with the staple puller. "So who else was in your class?"
"Uh, of the people that are still around..." He counted on his fingers. "Amanda, Doug, Jono, John... I think that's about it. Artie was there, of course, but younger."
"And just as angry?" Jean said, less joking more almost a touch sad. "Sounds like an interesting group. I only really crossed paths with Kitty and Haller when I was younger."
"Not quite as angry", Angelo said a little more quietly. "That was before things happened. And yeah, we were - interesting. We called ourselves the Bad Kids Club - except maybe Doug, he was a good kid."
Jean smiled. "Gotta have that one outlier, I guess. So were you guys still Generation X like this group, though? Feels apropos."
"Nothing that official. The place was really a school back then - a small one, sure, but a working school. So we weren't a team as such."
"Hm," Jean murmured wistfully then turned back to her work. "Must've been nice." There wasn't as much in the folder as she thought, especially with a scanner that you could feed things into. Making short work of it, she spotted a familiar name among the next up and paused. "Uh...maybe we should switch? I see mine and um....Not sure if I want to see what Charles wrote about me." Actually she did, but that was the problem.
He glanced over at her and nodded. "I shouldn't think there'd be any surprises in there, but sure. We can switch."
"Thanks," Jean said, handing hers over. It was a little thicker than most but not by much.
"But if you want to take a peek at yours I can give it," she offered.
Angelo chuckled. "Again, there probably won't be any surprises. I remember all too well what I got up to then... but that was another life. On the other hand... maybe it would be nice to see what they really thought. They never did kick me out, after all."
"Charles always had a soft spot for the outcasts and the loner kids," Jean said, handing him the file as well. "It's like a secondary power."
"He sent Scott all the way to LA to find me", he said with a fond smile, taking it. "And he tried to fix me, but never so hard I'd run."
"He knew my dad. I had um....had some problems with my powers after my friend died. Charles tried to help. But my dad got jealous of Charles because he was helping and my dad wasn't able to, so he decided Scotland was great and I should move there. He said it was because he wanted to protect me and us should anyone find out and maybe it was but...It took a while for me get over that."
"If he sent you to Muir, you probably still had some contact with Charles?" he guessed. "Since he and Moira always worked together."
"I did, through Cerebro. Charles still tutored me. I finally convinced my dad that I could have two father figures in my life and my dad realized I still needed training," Jean said with a shrug as she moved on to the next file.
"I didn't really have that problem." He was looking at his file. "My dad died when I was little, and for a while after I came here, my mom didn't know where I was."
Jean glanced over. "Why not?"
"I ran away. My manifestation didn't go so well." He turned one hand palm up on the folder. "Not because of her, but I couldn't go home."
"Were you afraid of what she'd think?" Jean said. “Kinda”, he admitted. “But more afraid of what people might do to her.”
"Definitely a valid concern," Jean said. "I've often had the same thought about my own family."
“Do you see much of them?” he asked quietly. Jean smiled. "When I can. I get so busy with the hospital and being an X-Man that it's mostly only on holidays now." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "It's a nice reminder that people still have normal lives."
"I guess it would be. Normal lives with normal things to worry about, not like us." He grinned crookedly and looked back at the next folder. "Oh hey, here's Amanda's."
Turning with curiosity, Jean quirked a brow. "Alright, this is getting good," she said with a smile.
"I've heard a few stories. Is there a picture?"
He picked it out and held it up. "Her hair was better than mine."
Jean's eyes widened and she grinned broadly. "Wait--No. This doesn't even look like Amanda. She leaned into that goth phase hard."
"You have no idea", he said with a grin. "Her students wouldn't believe it if I told them."
"I still hardly believe it and I'm looking at the photo," Jean said with a laugh. "Did she have black hair when you first met her? So what did you guys think when she went blonde?"
"The blonde's actually natural, like the rest of her birth family. She just stopped dyeing it - and I thought it looked kind of good."
Jean smiled. "It's always interesting to see the phases of life people go through," she said, then nodded toward the file.
"So is there anything fun in there besides the different hair color?"
"Bound to be, but most of it she wouldn't want me to share." He was holding on to the file. "Let me see if there's anything not sensitive."
Jean's smile faded quickly as a note of discomfort flickered across her eyes and she rubbed the back of her head. "Actually. You know....It's okay. Nevermind. I shouldn't have intruded," she said. She glanced back to her own stack of files. "I should....get back to scanning."
Angelo blinked at her. "Hey, you know, it's just... I was there the first time so I know things she wouldn't want anyone to hear unless it was from her. You OK?"
Silent for a couple of moments, Jean closed the file she was holding. "Yeah, I know. That's um--why it feels like intruding," Jean said with a slow nod.
"Since I wasn't there the first time. You guys have this shared experience that I'll never have. It was fun to hear about the silly teenage things you all went through but this...I guess it reminded me of all the bad things too." Jean shrugged.
"Amanda and I aren't that close. Hell, for a little while we were...sort of enemies. So I probably won't ever hear about her past from her. I guess what you said just....reminded me of that. About the outsider part. How I could have been at the school and I wanted to be and I...hate my dad for denying it to me. I could've been somewhere with people like me instead of stuck on a tiny Scottish island. And now I'm looking through these files with you and I feel guilty for reading these private moments I probably shouldn't." She looked down, blinking with an awkward, embarrassed smile.
"So um...yeah."
"I can see why you'd resent it, but try not to hate him", he said quietly, then changed the subject. "Most of the stuff in these files probably isn't that private, either, and I can tell you more of the stupid stuff we did if you want."
Staring down at the stack of well worn files for a moment, Jean glanced over with a faint smile.
"Okay, sure."
"Well, there was this one time with Rogue's car...".
