Title: Underneath It All
Fandom: X-Men (comic verse with slight alterations)
Pairing: Jean Grey/Emma Frost
Rating: PG
Notes: Somewhat AU, basically after Genosha Scott takes off and Jean finds herself spending much more time with the Institute's newest addition, Emma Frost.
Disclaimer: Don't own them, though I do covet them.

xxx

Part 10

Three days later …

Jean winced as she watched the young man on the screen get hit in the face with a wrench, laughing a moment later at Bobby as he pointed at the screen and laughed so hard he had to hold his sides and began wheezing in pain. The scene itself had been mildly amusing, but Bobby himself was comedy gold. Seeing the expression on Rogue and Kitty's faces as they stared at their teammate they obvious felt the same way.

Jean glanced to the side just barely catching sight of a figure in white out of the corner of her eye.

~Emma~

~What?~ Jean could practically picture the blonde momentarily slumping at being caught before drawing herself back up to her full height defiantly.

~I saw you. Come in here~

~No~ She sounded positively ornery. Jean wished she could see her face. It had been hard for her at first to discern the blonde's moods by watching her, but she had gotten much better at it over the past couple of weeks. To be sure Emma still had more than a few inscrutable looks but in general Jean found her to actually be almost expressive now that she had recognized the little signs to look for.

~Why?~

~Because I hate you all~

Jean finally laughed at that momentarily drawing the attention of the others in the room over to her. Clearing her throat, Jean waved away their questioning glances, smiling to show them that it was nothing to be concerned about.

~There's popcorn~ Jean said turning her attention back to Emma. Silence met her attempt at enticement. ~Licorice?~ Still nothing. ~Spandex and giant balls~ Jean smiled when she heard Emma sigh at her in her head. ~Oh come on, I promise to keep you entertained~

~You're not going to quit jabbering at me until I sit down are you?~ Emma huffed. Jean smiled upon hearing the tone. She knew she had won. Emma had a particular tone she used when she was reluctantly giving into things and she had just heard her.

~No~

~Fabulous~

A moment later Jean spotted Emma's figure emerge in the living room once more. The blonde stopped and looked around at the assembled X-Men and sighed deeply before moving over to the couch and dropping down next to Jean like a sack of very graceful, very depressed potatoes.

Jean just smirked.

Jean absentmindedly toyed with the rings on her left hand as her eyes were directed towards the screen. She had only been able to pay the smallest of attention to what was happening on screen because Emma had seen fit to take up a mental commentary a few minutes after she had come into the room. She didn't mind though, she found Emma's remarks to be quite funny and was enjoying the telepathic contact. It was kind of fun to have someone hanging out in her head for so long without having to worry about them trying to do something in there, or having them worry about what she was going to try to do to them. Such sustained mental contact required a level of trust most non-telepaths didn't have, and a level of closeness that she didn't have with most telepaths.

"Screw Bernice, goddman you Jean!" Emma moaned out loud dropping her head into her hand. She still couldn't believe she was sitting there watching a movie about dodge ball. Oh she knew that she could get up, insult their collective intelligences for subjecting themselves to this drivel and walk away, but she also knew she wouldn't do that because of Jean. She knew that the redhead had been neglecting her other friends over the past few weeks to spend time with her and that she had consequently spent quite a bit of time over the past few days dividing up her time among them to make up for it, before organizing a group movie night. Shopping with Ororo, chess with Warren, god knew what with Kitty and Rogue, analyzing whatever in the lab with Hank. It had left Emma quite bored for a few days and the truth was she would sit through the stupid movie if it meant she could spend some time with redhead. Because, though she didn't really like admitting it – even to herself – she had missed Jean's company.

"You are so crotchety sometimes Frost," Jean responded smiling brightly, not the least bit daunted by Emma's belly aching. She knew that Emma would never admit to actually finding something like "Dodgeball" entertaining, because she had a reputation of not liking anything ever to maintain, but the blonde had to have been paying quite a bit of attention to keep up her detailed commentary. "You're like one of those old men that yell at kids when they step on their lawn."

Emma rolled her head back so that she was looking at the ceiling and released a long suffering sigh. "Go ahead, make your jokes, Mr. Jokey... Joke-maker," she eventually muttered, quoting from the film before lazily reaching up and briefly making an 'L' shape on her forehead with her fingers.

"'L' for love. Good times," Jean responded smiling as Emma rolled her eyes.

~Leave me alone~ Emma sent to Jean in response.

~So cranky. Do you want a hug?~ Jean turned to look at Emma as she awaited her response.

~I want you to die~ Emma sent back though she was smirking indulgently as she met Jean's eyes. The redhead had shifted closer to her, probably unconsciously, but there was no way in hell she was going to take Jean up on that offer a room full of nosy X-Men, not even as part of a joke. If they had been alone she probably would have, just to bug Jean, but they weren't alone. Besides wasn't like she really wanted a hug or anything.

~Been there, done that. All I got was a lousy t-shirt~

"Original," Emma mumbled out loud a second later clearly not meaning it before she reached over towards Jean to grab the pack of Twizzler's the redhead had nestled in her lap. She didn't usually eat candy, she never had even as a child, but she needed something to distract her from the horror of X-Men after-hours bonding rituals.

Jean slapped her hand away.

"You said you didn't want any," Jean replied, slapping at Emma's hand once more as the blonde reached for her again, finally twisting away from Emma using her body to shield the candy as the blonde began to grab at her.

If she'd been paying more attention to the room instead of focusing entirely on evading Emma's roaming hands she'd have realized that their little discussion, and consequent adolescent grappling match had more viewers than the movie did, but she wasn't paying more attention and she didn't notice.

"Trust me Jean, you don't want to play it this way," Emma responded in a deathly serious voice her hands loosely resting on the redheads waist. Jean turned her head over her shoulder so that she could see the blonde's face, and while her features were calm and composed, her eyes were twinkling which made her threat not really threatening at all. "I will end you," the blonde went on. "Make things easy on yourselves and give me the bag of candy sticks."

Jean considered the request for a moment, and then a look of defiance crossed her face. Emma smirked. A moment later Jean's eyes widened and her hand flew to her face to cover her eyes even though the image that was assaulting her was inside of her head. The Twizzler's fell into her lap and Emma grabbed them easily.

"That," Jean said a moment later having recovered from the barrage of images Emma had just projected into her head, "was obscene." She looked completely scandalized. "Completely unacceptable," Jean continued though a small smile was beginning to appear on her lips.

Emma just looked at her before taking a Twizzler out of the pack and placing the tip of it in her mouth, staring at Jean all the while, her eyebrow arching challengingly.

~You know you loved every second ~ Emma winked to punctuate the statement as Jean received the message.

Jean crossed her arms and hunkered back down into the couch turning away from Emma, but not before the blonde saw the smile on her face.

-

Ororo watched as Emma leaned closer to Jean, placing her hand on her shoulder before whispering something in her ear. They were telepaths, there was absolutely no reason for them to get that close. They could have spoken mentally as they had been doing at various times during the movie. However, she could see that Jean didn't seem to mind the blonde's familiarity as she looked over at Emma and smiled before shaking her head and muttering a response to whatever it was Emma had said to her.

She looked over to her side to see that Warren and Hank were also covertly watching the two women's behavior, just as pretty much everyone else had been at numerous points during the movie. She sighed and turned to look at the screen as the credits began to roll wondering if Jean had any idea what dangerous ground she threading on.

"See that was fun," Jean said stretching her back out slightly as the credits started to roll.

"I'm not sure exactly what definition of the word fun you're using, but it's one I've never become acquainted with and would rather not bump into again," Emma replied forcing herself not look at Jean as the woman continued to rotate her torso. She was not above checking Jean out, in fact she quite enjoyed doing that, but she'd be damned if she'd do it in a room full of people that hated her guts and had been studying them like little mice in maze for the past couple of minutes. She was fairly certain that Jean was unaware of the scrutiny but she didn't miss it, and had actually been playing up to it. Getting caught ogling the redhead wouldn't have been as amusing as flirting with her in front of them had been however.

"I think I saw a tear at the end," Jean teased and saw Emma's lips thin as Bobby laughed at her comment.

"Don't fool yourself into thinking I was feeling an emotion," Emma replied haughtily. "I simply got a whiff of Popsicle Pete's cologne and my olfactory senses cried out in protest," she continued turning to stare so coldly at Bobby it could be mistaken for his very own work.

"Hey! What'd I do?" Bobby replied affronted and rather freaked out by the evil eye Emma was giving him. She was not a woman that he wanted to piss off, especially now that she was practically invulnerable.

"I didn't smell anything," Jean responded ignoring Bobby.

"That's because you're sitting next to me, dear," Emma responded easily. "My naturally pleasant fragrance was shielding you from the horror of Bobby's man perfume."

"Cologne," Bobby exclaimed not liking that description at all.

"Oh, I know that's what it aspires to be. But it would as egregious of me to refer to that," Emma said waving her hand as if to indicate Bobby's general smell, "as cologne as it would be to call Snoopy's Last Supper a work of art."

Emma glanced over at Jean just in time to see the amused grin that fluttered over her lips at the comment.

"Why can't you insult me like a normal person?" Bobby asked standing up glaring down at Emma. The blonde was absolutely infuriating! She was belittling, and bitchy, and condescending, a skanky pervert from what he'd heard of her days at the Hellfire club, and completely lacking any discernable ethics or morality. He had been waiting for Jean to go all Dark Phoenix on ass, however as he observed more and more of their interactions it seemed to him as if Jean would be more likely to kiss her ass and that bugged him even more. Jean should have been smart enough not to buy what the blonde was selling even if she was emotionally vulnerable at the moment because Scott was a jerk.

"Calm down, Bobby," Jean said standing up as well moving between Bobby and Emma who was still comfortably seated on the couch. She had actually been surprised by how long all of them were able to remain in a room together before Emma provoked someone to threaten her with bodily harm. She was willing to call this somewhat of a breakthrough and retreat while they were ahead. "Emma's just forgotten her house manners."

"House manners?" Emma questioned cantankerously as Jean made her sound like a naughty golden retriever that had gone number one on the new Persian rug.

~Come on Emma~

Emma glared at her for a long moment, making sure Jean realized that she didn't at all care to be commanded and spoken to like an incorrigible seven year old. However, since she really didn't want to spend any more time with the occupants of the, once she was reasonably certain Jean gotten the message she crabbily replied ~You owe me for this~

~Night cap?~ Jean asked smiling holding her hand out to help Emma up. Offering to imbibe together seemed to be a great motivator with the blonde. ~I know this absolute lush that practically has a fully stocked bar in her room~

~Your friend sounds absolutely delightful~ Emma sent back smirking, reluctantly releasing Jean's hand when she was upright.

Bobby turned to the side as Jean and Emma went oddly silent once more, obviously holding one of the private conversations they'd been having all night. Spotting his other team members he could tell that they were covertly watching Jean and Emma's interaction as well as they moved around the room cleaning up, their eyes turning to obviously follow the telepaths once they said their goodbyes and exited the room.

"Wow," Bobby exclaimed drawing out the word for dramatic effect. "This might be the first time this home has been wrecked and still left standing."

"Can it Bobby," Warren responded immediately, his tone clipped though he was still staring in the direction the women had gone.

"I'll shut up, but you were all thinking it too," Iceman replied turning to face the others. "If Papa bear stays away much longer, he might find Goldie Locks sleeping in his bed," he continued holding up his hands. Everybody always shot the messenger. "Don't hate me for calling a duck a duck."

Warren averted his eyes, Rogue and Kitty exchanged uncomfortable looks and Hank sighed.

"Well," Ororo said finally moving towards the door without waiting for a response, "I think that's goodnight."

TBC...