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Ten things I hate like about you. (I guess) [notes]
Jean stared at the pager.
Funny thing she had learned after the last time she saw nobody (not that she had done research or anything. You needed a pager to page another pager.
She knew she was fucked when she actually went out and bought one with her allowance, along with a sim card.
She was the leader of the X-men, for god’s sake. She was not an idiot. So Jean popped the sim card out of her burner phone and put the new one in. Finding her new number and the ten code pager number Nobody has penned on her arm (and she had penned in her journal), she steeled herself.
After giving it a second thought she shoved the pager and the new sim into her drawer, and promptly (decisively) forgot about them.
She was the leader of the X-men, after all. She wasn’t an idiot. And she was not some head over heels damsel who made a fool of herself over some guy. Business only.
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And so the pager stayed in her drawer. She mostly forgot about it and her weird pseudo-alliance with the other. As the time passed and the seasons changed the whole interaction reduced down to a blink in her memory. An odd, one off, momentary lapse in judgement on her part born out of a mutual enemy.
Three months, it stayed there.
“Angel-”
“Already on it.”
Warren took off, having near-read the telepath's mind, to do a perimeter check around the abandoned lab. So far the best evidence they had that it was being used for what they thought i was being used for was Blockbuster’s discarded belt.
“If the marauders were here, then Sinister was here. Beast, try and find some equipment. He wouldn’t go anywhere without his tools, he might have left some behind.”
“ Yes ma’am.”
“ Icey come with me, we’re going to dust.”
Bobby smiled.
“ You’re the boss.”
Bobby was way smarter than people anticipated for the wise-cracking little brother of the group,which is why Jean always, always brought him along to look through records. He could crack a filing cabinet’s worst organization methods in two minutes tops.
The two of them stumbled their way to the basement storage through a mixture of guessing and checking for secret passages and Jean telekinetically shaking every wall panel until one came loose. Sinister liked his records private, and would do anything to keep them that way.
So it was a surprise when they found two scattered boxes of manilla folders, each neatly penned and labelled.
“I’m surprised he didn’t burn these or something.” Bobby said, going through one of the boxes. “ He’s usually way more nitpicky.”
“ The fact that he wasn’t nitpicky concerns me.” Jean replied. “ I think these are probably all junk to distract us.” She leafed through her box quickly, taking telepathic snapshots to send to the professor. It wasn’t exactly photographic memory, but she could store neat little names away for a little while, if only to tell him later. “We should let these people know that sinister has documents on them, it’s only right.”
“ Should we? Most of these look like random little kids who may or may not be mutants. If he left them behind then they probably don’t even matter.” Bobby shrugged. “ This all just reeks of a red herring to me. This whole lab.”
Jean didn’t hear him.
Nobody
S.S
With a quick glance over at Bobby, she opened the folder. Inside was a paperclipped,grainy picture of Nobody. It looked like it was taken from a ways away. He was talking to someone out of frame, his ever-stern glare cutting into them, unaware of the camera.
A few scattered legal note pages were underneath the picture. The same loopy handwriting as before.
Male
Est. age 17-20
Rank A
There were a series of strange symbols interspersed with actual words.
Metabolizes
Concussive
emitted
Occipital lobe
The rest was indecipherable- except
Primary objective is containment- alive, preferably, he is of very little use to me dead should I not receive him within 36 hours.
“Jean?”
She looked up.
“ What's that?”
“ Nothing useful.” She brushed Bobby off, “ Why don’t you go help Hank, I'll clean up here.”
“ Are you sure?”
She looked up and smiled.
“ Yeah, I'm sure.”
Bobby smiled, a little concerned.
“Alright then.”
She waited until she heard the pitter of his footsteps to fade before moving on to the next file, swallowing.
Her fears were founded.
Marvel Girl
J.G
Est age 17-20
Rank Ω (potential)
Telekinetic- telepathic
Her heart palpated as she saw her initials underneath the codename. It could mean nothing. It could mean nothing. There was more weird scribbling, with less coherent words.
Primary objectives containment alive. I will personally dispose of any individual who causes life-threatening injury or death. That is a threat, victor.
She put down the file.
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Scott was with his sisters when his pager beeped.
Lorna looked up. Without verbally saying anything she managed to mock him for not only owning a pager, but having the audacity to keep it near him.
“Shut it.” he replied. Wanda stifled a laugh as he stood up and pulled it out of his coat, which was hanging on the door handle.
XXX-XXX-XXXX
911 423
Scott blinked down at the phone number for a second before he realized what it was.
“Who is it?” Wanda asked. She was on her stomach, reading on her kindle.
“ No one.” He replied.
Grabbing his bag, he pulled out his burner and punched in the phone number.
“ Oh he’s got the drug dealer phone. It’s serious.” Lorna remarked. Scott rolled his eyes.
Scott’s heart skipped a couple beats.
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Jean was laying in bed when her blackberry buzzed on her desk. She reached over with heavy limbs, halfway out of bed to reach it.,
She blinked a few times, trying to think of something to say.
When he didn’t respond in another hour, Jean fell asleep with her finger on the send button.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The wall behind Jean exploded, first with a beam of red light, and then a body.
“ Oh! Shit!” she yelped. The body fell to the ground with a groan, so at least he was alive. She looked for the source.
“ Well, if it isn’t my favorite pain in the ass.” Nobody said the dust settled. She rolled her eyes.
“ You just put this guy in the hospital.”
“ And he’s on the job so worker's comp will cover the expenses. Nobody’s out anything but the insurance company. God forbid.” He remarked sarcastically.
“ He’s still going to the hospital-” Jean protested before giving up. She wasn’t playing this game. “ Do you have a reason to be here or are you just being annoying.”
He shrugged.
“ Maybe I just wanted to see you.”
She curled her nose and sent him flying with her TK.
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Warren was sitting at his desk when Jean stomped into his room and collapsed onto the ground melodramatically.
“ What.” he asked, not looking away from his computer.
“ I hate men. I wish I was a lesbian.”
“ You and me both.”
Jean lifted her head to glare up at him.
“ You like hearing about my boy drama, don’t even start.”
Warren hummed in acknowledgment. Jean crawled from the floor to his bed, falling backwards and pulling out her phone.
Her burner phone.
Warren noticed.
“ Are you using that to text him?”
Jean paled a little.
“ No! I just replaced the sim and I need to make sure all my contacts are transferred!’ she defended. As the leader of the x-men, Jean was the only one of them allowed a cell phone at all, let alone a burner. But Charles seemed to understand the need for secrecy and urgency of contact with some of the other anonymous teams in the tri state area. Warren gave her a funny look but ultimately ignored the defensiveness.
“Ok..?”
Jean huffed.
“ I just don’t know what to do, Third.”
Warren turned around his his chair, his wings brushing against the desk. They trailed to the floor as he scooted forward.
“ Tell me about him.”
“ What?”
Warren examined a hangnail all too casually, leaning his arms on the back of the chair.
“ What about him makes you like him?”
Jean rolled over so she was facing Warren, scrolling though her messages with Nobody. She felt so bad about coming to him with this. She couldn’t even believe she was entertaining the idea of Nobody being somebody she had any feelings for other then hatred.
“I don’t even know if do like him.” a final grasp at denial.
“ Why wouldn’t you?” Warren looked up at her, resting his head on his folded arms and blinking up at her. She huffed.
“ He’s a dick, firstly.”
“ Well, you dated Scott for a year, so that doesn’t seem to be a huge turn-off for you.”
Jean reached behind her head and threw his pillow at him. He ducked out of the way, and it flopped against the far wall.
“ Sorry-sorry- what else don’t you like about him?”
“ You guys would hate him. Like hate him.”
“ Ok.”
“ He’s just- I feel like I shouldn't like him, but I do.”
Warren nodded.
“ Ok. What do you like about him?”
Jean laid down on her back, her arms stretched out.
“ He’s hot.”
“That’s helpful.”
Jean glared at him. Warren was smiling slyly.
“ He’s tortured. He rides a motorcycle. He’s… not nice but not unkind.”
“Oookay?”
“ There’s just something about him- Like- He has this egotistical air of superiority, but i don’t actually think he’s an egomanic, i think he just does it to annoy me.”
“ Annoy you-?”
“ -And he’s so sure of his reasoning! Like he thinks his morals are above anybody else’s, it’s so frustrating!”
“ ..And?”
“And it’s frustratingly hot.” Sometimes Nobody would bark orders at the brotherhood, suddenly more serious then he ever was around Jean, which made her wonder what he was like around her.
Her mind flashed back to their first, fateful face to face meeting.
“she realized that he got a familiar tone when he was smiling at her, which meant that he smiled at her a lot before she could see his face.”
“ And I don’t think he’s as much of an asshole as he wants me to think. And I can't stop thinking about him. I wish I could.”
Jean felt the bed dip next to her side as Warren joined her.
“ I think that you should go for it.”
She turned her head to look at him. His wings flopped off the bed behind him as he lay on his side.
“ What?”
“You're obsessed with him, Jean. Obviously there's something about this guy,” he encouraged, nudging her, “ You should just go for it.”
“ You think so?”
“ Yeah, I think so.”
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Jean didn’t know what she was thinking. This was insanity. She was secretly meeting an actual recognized domestic terrorist because…? What? She had a fat crush on him?
It was stupid. She was being stupid.
She lifted her head when she heard the crunch of gravel and an engine put-puttering.
Jean was leaning against the hood of her car when the motorcycle and it’s rider rolled to a stop a few feet in front of her. Nobody wasn’t in his mask, his face hidden behind the unfeeling plastic of his helmet, a garnet red visor he didn’t bother to flip up. The engine was cut as he leaned back, straddling the bike.
The two of them just stood there for a while, staring at each other, waiting for someone to speak first.
“ You like nice.” Nobody commented. She assumed the ever-so-slight nod of his head was referring to her outfit. She hadn’t really done anything except thrown on a flannel over her sweatshirt and throw on her suit mask. It felt odd, waiting there in plainclothes and a mask. Like she was pretending.
He was in gear, which really did it for her, if she was being honest. The bulky jacket and black cargo pants hit his figure well. Jean wondered if he was wearing his visor underneath the helmet, or the helmet was his disguise.
“ Thanks.”
She let him twiddle his thumbs uncomfortably for a few more moments to make herself feel better. It reminded her that she wasn’t crazy, or at the very least this was a mutual insanity.
“ We should talk.”
He sat up a little straighter.
“ Yeah, we should.” he agreed.
God this was so uncomfortable. She was regretting this.
“ I’m sorry for being a jerk the other day.” She apologized. “ While we were texting.”
He scoffed, looking forward.
“ I deserved it. I made it personal during that fight.”
“ It was stupid of me to expect you not too.”
“ Then why are you holding yourself to that standard?”
Jean’s eyebrows furrowed. Nobody leaned forward on the bike in a way that looked uncomfortable but was very appealing to look at.
“ Where are we going with this?” She asked. He groaned, letting his helmet thunk against the body.
“I don’t know, Marvel girl. I wasn’t really expecting this to go anywhere.”
She sat up on the hood, folding her knees to her chest.
“ We’re supposed to hate each other."
“ Yeah.” He brought his hands up to rest on the back of his head.
“I used to hate you.”
He sighed, his shoulders falling significantly.
“Same.”
“ I don't anymore.”
“ I don’t either.”
It simmered for a while, just there. The admission was enough to scare both of them back into a terse silence.
Jean was sick of silence.
“ I like your hair.”
He drew up a little bit.
“ What?”
“ I like that your hair is visible in your costume. I really like your hair. I think about it sometimes when we text.”
She could hear the clogs grinding against each other as his brain shuddered to a start.
She held her knees a little tighter and looked away.
“ I like your costume a lot, too.”
“ you do?” He sounded very surprised.
“ Yeah, it’s kinda cool. And it makes your arms look nice.”
“ I like how your costume is tactical and still unique.”
“ Really?”
“Yeah. I noticed the skirt has hidden pockets and that's really smart because I don't think someone would think to look for pockets on a skirt. It gives you a tactical advantage.” He folded his gloved hands in his lap as he explained. “ And it.. Looks very nice on you.”
“ I admire your mind, I want to study it.” she observed idly.
“ I’m sure there's something somewhere in one of Sinister's labs for you to look at.” He replied in turn. She huffed a small laugh.
“ I like bantering with you too, it’s.. Fun.” he found the word with a small amount of difficulty.
“ Yeah?” she leaned back on her hands, letting hand off the edge of the hood.
“Yeah. You get really pissed off at me, I do it on purpose.” He admitted, resting his head on
“ Good to know you’re a pigtail puller.” She said evenly. He laughed, a low harmonic note.
“ Only to you.”
“ I bet you say that to all the girls.” She said coyly, he laughed again.
“ Oh sure, but I only give the really pretty ones my pager.”
She smiled, but it fell after a moment.
“ Are we actually doing this?”
He sighed, buffing a spot on his bike with his hand.
“ Can we? Are we even able to? He asked slowly.
She worried her lip before rolling her eyes.
“ Who cares,” she huffed. “ I’m done caring.”
He looked up at her.
“ Do you want this to be something more than whatever it is now?”
He stared at her, she imagined the shock behind his blank helmet.
“ What would that look like?” He demanded, squaring his shoulders.
“ Masks on, casual.” she replied. He nodded.
“ Ok. ok.” He said.
“Ok.” she replied, a weight lifted off her chest and shoulders, and suddenly she wondered how long she had been carrying it. He exhaled shakily.
“ I like your wheels by the way, it’s a sweet ride.” He mentioned off handily, his voice wavering a little bit.
“ Wanna go for a spin?” She scooted up the hood, reaching through her open window to grab the keys from the front seat. Sue her, she knew he was a good pickpocket.
“ I’m alright, I don’t right passenger.” He laughed. “But maybe next time i’ll bring my spare helmet and we can ride.
“ I’d like that.” she smiled, she wasn’t phased by the decline of her request, after all, Scott was the exact same way, way back when.
But for the first time in months, she didn’t think of Scott as their conversation carried long into the night.