Jono, Paige and some lilac bushes

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Sunday afternoon, Paige drags Jono outside with little to no explanation. We learn that Paige is, indeed a psycho (but an analytical psycho) and Jono might be working on his mutation a little more in the future. Then they head off for a shower.


It might have been, Jono thought, the exact same little grove of lilacs where he'd first met Paige almost a year ago, and there they were again. On somewhat better terms this time. He rubbed his arm, smoothing the sleeve of his obligatory black shirt. "This is an abusive relationship," he declared.

Paige made a cooing noise and rubbed her fingers together. "This is the smallest violen playing the smallest sympathy suite just for you, chickpea." She grinned at him and patted his arm. "Besides. You needed some airing out. You were getting a mothball scent to you," she continued, pulling a lilac cluster from one of the nearby bushes and tucking it behind his ear.

He dropped to the ground, crosslegged, looking huffy, but couldn't deny the fact he hadn't been outside the mansion in several days, maybe even weeks again. "This is overrated," he muttered, the lilacs nodding at his temple. "What's there to do out here anyway?"

"Oh yes, because sulking is very attractive," Paige replied, standing over him. Stepping into the circle his legs made she bent down to look him in the eye and decided to take a definately masculine approach. "Could always beat each other up. You're out of practice."

Jono leaned back a little, surprised out of his sulk by her straightforwardness. "I wasn't sulking," he said automatically, squinting a little in the spots of sunlight the lilac bushes let through. "You'd probably win," he continued thoughtfully, then leaned forward, coming almost nose to nose with her. "I'm not out of practice, I'm just a right idiot at hand to hand."

Paige bumped her nose against his as she tilted her head, amused. "Who said anything about hand to hand? I already know I could take you on in hand to hand. You need practice with this," she said, cupping his covered chin with a gentle palm, easing her words. "And you're not very good at initating said practice yourself."

"So you thought taking matters into your own hands was a better idea?" Jono put his palms flat against the grass. "There's a reason why I don't do anything with it."

"If the reason is something to do with blowing up the planet, woe, angst, etcetra I don't want to hear it," Paige replied, but her grin made it obvious she wasn't totally serious. "You know I can handle this. There aren't many people who can."

"Maybe." Jono gave her a doubtful look, one that said he'd be chewing on his lip if he could. "You know we should be in the danger room for that?" He even seemed genuinely worried, although worried for himself or Paige, it was hard to tell.

Paige sighed and eased herself down and into his lap, her knees starting to cramp. "Yes and yes. But would you work with me in the Danger Room?" There was something about her that was rather doubtful he would, hence her taking him out here and providing certain different incentives.

"Sunshine," Jono tilted his head, adjusting his legs so that they were both comfortable. "I wouldn't work with anyone, all right?" He raised one grass-stained hand to sweep a bit of blond hair behind her ear. "What were you planning on, anyway?"

"I had to have a plan? The extent of my plan was seeing if you would agree." Paige smiled at him; she seemed to the teasing queen today. "The point is, you're right. You don't work with anyone. Which entirely defeats the point of you being here. I know you were forced here, Jonothan. I'm aware of that. But couldn't you just take advantage of the situation a little bit?"

"If by forcing you mean I practically hid in Wisdom's luggage to get here, then yeah," Jono said, dryish. "Hell, I've worked with people, just not too much with the exploding part. And there's just no point in saying no to you, is there?"

She knew different incentives had been a good idea. "Have you ever been all that good at saying no to me in the first place?" Paige asked, a hint of a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth.

"No, and I hate you," Jono remarked casually, although not very serious at all. Then he dropped his eyes. "Go ahead, then. Change into something more comfortable so we can break rules and act irresponsibly."

"I hate you too, heart," Paige answered, making things a lot more difficult than they had to be as she got up. "And that's for not minding your eyes." Turning her back to him she stripped herself of her clothes - she liked these pair of jeans - and tugged at her hair, revealling what appeared to be a diamond husk. In her new form she folded the previously removed clothes and raised an eyebrow at him. "Come on then."

Jono ducked his head, more amused at the jab about his eyes than he probably should've been and got up, forgetting the lilac flowers in his hair until he had gotten his shirt off and the little things rained on him. "Oh, for-" he paused, attention snagged by the shiny, sparkly Paige, and spent the time it took to unbuckle the containment thing staring at her. "Yeah," he finally said, glow extending from his chest.

Paige would have blushed under that gaze if she could have and instead focused on staring at him with the same sort of underlying intent. She knew he'd just come up with some sort of bitter remark to her comments about how stunningly beautiful she thought he was and so kept them close to herself. "Should I say bring it or something now? I'm unfamiliar with informal combat."

"I don't know." He raised one shoulder in a lopsided shrug. "Should've asked Sarah. Or Angelo. Or just about anyone else. We don't do lots of fighting, do we." He felt extraordinarily vulnerable, and slowly curled his hands into fists to keep putting them across his chest.

"Not this kind, no." Paige decided to ignore all the hidden messages in that one and took a step towards him instead. "I love you. You know that, right?"

Jono nodded solemnly. "Makes this all the harder, really," he observed. "Are you sure I can't hurt you?"

"Positive." Paige always had prided herself on being a good liar. "Should I go back to saying I hate you?" she asked jokingly, brushing her hands along the tendrils of his energy as proof she could not be hurt.

Her lies worked on Jono at least. Little discharges of energy sparked across her diamond skin, and he took a step back. "No, you don't have to." The next wave of power was a little more forceful, but sadly scattered, spreading every which way around her.

Paige smiled, glittered shocks of diamond in her mouth. "Come on, Jonothan. You can do better than that. This isn't even a tickle." Paige opened her palm, letting the energy center there before fading away. "Concentrate."

It wasn't about concentration, it was about being uncertain of what was the limit when he would eventually end up hurting her again. But Jono said nothing, calling to mind all those seemingly endless afternoons spent in Scott Summers' energy projection classes. The beams of coiling light twisted, as Jono took a few more steps back, and slowly coalesced into one, like an arc of electricity running between them.

It hit her square in the left shoulder, throwing her back at an awkward twist that more than caught her off guard. She flew through the air and tumbled to the ground in a hard heap. It was a long, pained moment that she lay there, cheek to the rough brick and eyes flat in their dimond covering before rolling onto her back and laughing. "Guess I asked for that."

The glow was back to doing its mad swirly thing around Jono, not looking threatening in anyway. He frowned worriedly, walking over to her, and extending his hand to help her up. "Are you all right? I didn't think it was that powerful."

Paige took the hand, hooking a diamond foot into his belt and throwing him over to land on his back by her head. "Just peachy keen, sweetheart." She laughed and rolled on her side to look at him. "Glad you found out about the extent of that power in your chest with me, though."

Jono lay there for a moment, stunned, staring at the sky, then rolled around on all fours before getting up. "I can see that," he dusted his trousers, a slight cherry-red tint to the generally yellow glow. "I did get one of those Sentinels once with that."

Paige got to her feet as elegantly as she could muster, brushing at the slight chink in her shoulder his blast had managed. "Good. The less evil super robots the better."

"Them I can deal with, it's the magic and demons I don't understand," Jono admitted, mildly agitated, once again wondering where to put his hands. "How long does that husk last?"

"An hour. But I can rehusk as often as I need to. As long as I can concentrate, anyway," she replied, examining the pointed claws of her fingers. "I'd rather deal with the demons. At least those aren't human or made my humans. My faith in humanity is rather frail as it is."

"What do you care about humanity when you're a mutant?" Jono exhibited some of his biased logic again; if it wasn't for them, it was against them. "Right, then," he said. "Still want to continue?"

Paige rolled her eyes, an odd noise like a knife on glass filling her corner of the yard. "I was once something like human, Jonothan. So were you," she said pointedly, arranging herself for another go. "All right. Again. I'm just not going to make it so easy on you this time."

Jono blinked suspiciously, eyes almost lost in the light. "Something everyone seems to like to forget," he said, somewhat bitter, obviously thinking of the dregs of his life in London. Then he squared his shoulders. "Come on, then, do your worst."

Laughing, Paige shook her head, clinks replacing the odd scratching noise. "You and I need serious help on the pre-battle bantering." She tried to stiffle her grin under more serious remarks, "My best would do nothing to you, heart, I'm fully aware of that. I'm all about the beating up, which would have no affect on you whatsoever. This is probably a good time to politely request that you don't ever go meglomaniac on us, please."

"Why would I do that?" Jono raised his eyebrows, relaxing a little when she seemed amused. "To make everyone stop listening to bad music? Besides," he continued with a wave of his hand, dismissing the issue, "as long as I'm a meagre low-level telepath, I'd be only too easy to take down by anyone more experienced."

"Telepaths are high in demand and low in supply, you know that. They also seem to end up crazy," Paige replied honestly, with a slight shrug of the shoulder. "Don't think I'm giving you any ideas, but it wouldn't be especially difficult to make sure there were none around to stop you." Paige flicked her fingers out, sunlight glinting off the points. "So, if you were to up your own telepath abilities as well, there would be, essentially, nothing I, we, could do."

Jono followed the movement of her hand, and the flecks of light dancing on her. "End up mad? That seems like a nice career choice." A little bit of taunting had slipped into Jono's thoughts. Not that it was never far away. "Not that this isn't an interesting discussion on my future quest for world dominance, I think I wouldn't get too far before someone decided to toss Miles at me."

"That's entirely possible, but I personally think-" Paige cut herself off by launching herself at Jono just then, hitting him square in the shoulders with knees easily shifting up to dig into his hipbones. He landed on the stones with a solid thump, head only missing the ground as she put a hand under it. Paige still had manners after all. She wasn't especially worried about the surprised look on his face, or the sickening noise the two of them had made when they landed; there were no bones to break, no skin to tear. In reality, he was the perfect sparring parter except for the part where she secretly enjoyed the way Logan had bled, if only for a little while. She put her claws up to his face and issued him a dangerous grin. "See? This is where I'd have you. But now, there's no where to go. No throat to slit, no skull to crack, nothing. You're an enigma, Starsmore."

The nerve-endings, or whatever it was he had now, in Jono's back did register something akin to pain, but faintly, like a memory, or a realization that this should hurt. He stared up at Paige, lax and unresisting, completely taken aback by her attack. "You could," he started after a while, a bit distant, "try to crush my skull. See what'd happen. No one's done that. I won't fight back." It was a genuine offer, made with some sort of hope that it'd either kill him or make him better.

Paige tsked and kissed his ear with smooth, diamond lips as she murmured in his ear, somehow managing to not let go of her obvious advantage, "Tempting as that is, what with you being all suddenly morbid, I'm very fond of you not dead. We'll save it for if you go world conquering."

"It's a good day to be morbid, with the sun shining and birds singing, and this mock fighting. Are you going to get off me, or do I have to do that myself?" Jono flexed his arms, bare elbows scratching at the stone underneath him. The energy swirls brightened a little, snaking up Paige's arms.

"Not fighting, practicing. Analyzing. I don't 'fight'," Paige replied curtly, watching the tendrils of psionics move around her in fascination. "And what makes you think you could do it yourself?"

"Analyzing what? How awful we are at making quips?" Jono stayed still, as if lying spreadeagled in the yard with a diamond girl on top of him was an everyday occurence. "I could explode," he offered simply.

Paige made a face at him, odd in this form. "So messy. And we'd have to replant the lilacs." She removed her hands from his shoulders, rolling over to sit beside him.

Jono was slow to sit up, as if he was wary of Paige pouncing him again. He craned his neck to look at his back, pebbled with little shards of rock and started dusting them off. "It wouldn't be the first time to replant things because of explosions," he said, with a sidelong glance at her. "Do you want to continue?"

"For you, maybe. Not for me. I much prefer it when Cain doesn't hate me," Paige observed, almost lazily, as she watched him through sheer eyelashes. "How would we continue, heart? We know that I can't injure you and you can't injure me until you practice a bit. So unless I've started some sort of fascination with you being able to blast me down..."

An amused twitch of eyebrows. "That was sarcasm, love," he noted, getting to his feet, hands digging into his backpockets. "And call me biased, but I think I prefer the alloy husk. It has attitude."

Paige pouted slightly, but not at all as she doesn't pout, getting to her feet. "First of all, my sarcasm radar has been so over used in the last year that it's exploded and is now rendered useless. Second, it doesn't matter what husk I'm in to accomplish attitude, Starsmore."

"Whatever, Guthrie." Jono rolled one shoulder in somehow smug indifference, waiting for her to get up before heading for their abandoned clothes. "And it's not as if there's been a lot of sarcasm around lately."

"I hate it when you call me that," Paige answered, brushing invisible dust off her pristine form. She decided to ignore the sarcasm comment and pull her clothes from the ground, shaking them out.

Jono picked up his shirts, sweeping errant lilac flowers from them, before starting to put them back on. "It's your name, though," he said.

Paige shook off the diamond husk, carefully minding that she managed to get it into the foldout container she now carried around and set it on the ground. Her clothes came on next, back to Jono now and partially obscured from view by the lilacs. "You make it sound like an insult."

"I'll remember that," he muttered, slipping his arm through the last sleeve and tugging on the shirt to make it sit better. The sleeves, as always, were a little too long, almost covering his hands. Then he bent a lilac branch out of the way, watching her get dressed. "You do remember I've seen you without a shred of clothing on before, don't you?"

Spinning around, Paige came face to face with him, suddenly wishing she'd kept her husk on a little longer as she flushed. "I... yes, of course. I know. I'm just..." she stumbled, trying to make the words come and failing quite miserably. Only managing to blush more, she ducked her eyes, smoothing down her t-shirt and reaching for her jeans.

Keeping his thoughts about her cuteness to himself, Jono just shredded a few leaves from the branch as he let it go, eyes smiling. "Prude," he accused gently, even knowing he had little call to say that when he couldn't feel comfortable without some clothes on either.

"That's not really news," Paige reminded him, as she stepped out from the brush, buttoning her fly as best she could with slightly wobbly hands, as if it had taken all her willpower to come out even in this state. "Although, you should know that's not exactly true, either."

"But close enough." He flicked some of the leaves at her. "Do we get to go back inside now? Where it's cool and not as bright?" He looked up at the sky, squinting as if to prove his point. "Might be nicer to take your clothes off there."

Paige raised her eyebrows, tucking a flower behind her own ear. "Your seduction tactics are just astounding. You certainly convinced me." Her words held little bite and what bite it did have was eased by the blue sparkle of her eyes.

Jono tossed his head, looking like he might be laughing somewhere inside. "I'm a natural." He sprinkled some more little flowers into Paige's hair, then caught his fingers into her own. "Maybe there should be a shower involved, to cool down. To get this itchy sand off my back."

"Maybe," Paige said with a cheeky little grin, giving his hand a squeeze. "But I don't think Scott would let you into his bathroom."

"And I wouldn't let you into his bathroom, so it's all good." Jono glanced at her, pulling her back towards the mansion. "Just how it works. I'm sure Angelo wouldn't mind sharing ours."

Paige gave him a smack, decidedly not anywhere near his torso or arms and stuck out her tongue. "Tease. Quickly now, before I remember that I have several new textbooks in my room."

"How interesting can they be?" Jono posed his rhetorical question, leaning down quickly to nuzzle her cheek, equivalent to a kiss from him. "Come on. Before I start to melt from all this sun and healthy exercise that was not my idea in the first place."