To BlueFictionStudios - Thanks a million for the kind words! I and all of my family are currently recovering from sickness, so writing is unfortunately slow-going.
I hope you enjoy this chapter. It's short and sweet, but pretty funny.
As always, read and review!
Thanks, Maria
The X-Men belong to Marvel.
Episode 14: Meddlesome Mom
"Jean, you knew!" Nate exploded angrily.
"I've no idea what you're talking about," his stepmother replied, but she was wearing a self-assured smile of pure false innocence. For the most powerful being in the universe, Jean Grey could be as petty as hell. The fact that the almost omnipotent telepath might be meddling in her seven-foot-tall grizzled stepson's love life would have been downright hilarious – if it didn't irk Nate so.
Nate planted his ham-sized hands on the edge of her kitchen table, making the china teacups rattle ominously. "Yes you do! Don't play dumb, Jean! You knew me and Neena were an item! But you hired her anyway!"
Jean stilled the rattling tea-service with her telekinesis. "Nathan, if you kill me, I will inevitably rise from the ashes of death as the Phoenix that I am, but heaven help you if you break this antique tea-set. Unlike me, it cannot be regenerated."
Jean was calmly buttering a muffin, but something in her voice made Cable pause. His stepmom was as warm and loving as a hug, but her "do-not-push-your-luck" tone never failed to scare him. He meekly put his hands in his lap, but he cut his pale blue eye in Rachel's direction. His half-sister was hugging herself in barely-suppressed laughter. The siblings had dropped by Jean's private living quarters in the treehouse for breakfast. Well, Rachel had. Nate had come by to confront Jean about hiring his ex-girlfriend Domino to his daycare staff.
When Cable pinned Rachel with another icy glare, she burst out laughing. "S-Sorry …!" she hiccupped, tears running down her face.
Nate growled and took a telekinetic swipe at his sister. Rach bridled, levitated Jean's breakfast muffin and took aim with the baked good at her baby bro's head. Jean intervened before things could get out of hand – or out of mind as the case may be. She plucked the muffin out of the air with her own telekinesis and stabbed her daughter with a warning glance. Rach stifled a giggle.
"What's so funny?" Kitty said, phasing through the wall and swiping a muffin off the table. Kitty Pryde often dropped in for breakfast at Jean's place. Kitty was a notoriously bad cook though she blamed the X-Men, and Jean in particular, for stifling her culinary creativity when she was young. The X-Men had faced everything from man-eating sentient islands to telepathic space-birds, but Jean was most terrified her teammates would die from food poisoning due to Kitty's terrible cooking.
Rach glanced at Kitty, her blue eyes sparkling with glee.
"Don't you do it, Rach! Don't you dare say a word!" Nate snarled.
"Oh, I won't dare say a word to Kitty," Rachel said furtively, already telepathically relaying the story to her best friend.
"Out! Out, both of you!" Jean cried, shooing out the two giggling girls. "You nosy little hens!"
Kitty and Rachel retreated, still laughing so hard they were crying, holding hands so Rach could phase through the wall alongside Kitty.
"So Cable's on the same team as his ex? Ouch, poor thing," Kitty gasped when she caught her breath.
Rachel shrugged her freckled shoulders, looking almost exactly like Jean when she did that, except she was a good two heads taller than her mom. "I'm not too worried about my big little brother. He can handle himself, believe me."
"I wasn't talking about Nate. I was talking about poor Domino," Kitty commented wryly. "Could you imagine a girl like her making it with a guy like Cable?"
"Yuck, no!" Rachel said, pulling a face at the mere suggestion of her brother's love life. "And you couldn't either, Kitty Pryde, you greedy girl!" Rach teased her pretty friend. Kitty's childhood sweetheart, Piotr Rasputin, had given her a son, but beautiful Kitty Pryde owned the hearts of at least a hundred different women - including Neena Thurman.
Every piece of her own heart, however, belonged to Rachel Summers – only Rach, the most intuitive of telepaths, had never acknowledged her best friend's loving devotion for her.
###
Jean wiped her hands together as if she'd just accomplished a difficult task. She adored her daughter and Kitty, who had come to the X-Men when she was just a little girl, Jean loved like her own. But Jean knew better than anyone how inseparable – and insufferable – those two could be.
Still, it did Jean's heart good to see Rachel smile, let alone laugh. The poor girl hadn't had it easy in life and Kitty made her happy; Jean just wished her stubborn daughter could see that.
And, above all else, she wished Kitty and Rachel could learn to use a door like normal people.
Shaking her head, Jean turned back to her stepson with a serious expression. "Listen to me, Nathan Christopher, I hired Neena because you needed a good, capable girl on your staff who met your stringent requirements. And she's all of those things and more."
Nate gave a grudging grunt. It was true. Neena was very, very good at what she did. And she adored children; God knows she wanted a dozen.
"I had no idea of your connection with her until you two were …reunited face-to-face and her thoughts concerning you projected loud enough to slap me in the face, understand?"
Nate felt sheepish and ashamed, like when he was a little kid and Jean was scolding him for being naughty. When he tried to stammer out an excuse (or an apology), Jean stabbed her index finger at him in a warning gesture. "And if you ever think I might do something as unscrupulous as entering someone's mind unbidden, you better rethink, buster! I am nothing similar to that Emma Frost creature …" she added in a mutter.
"But I thought Emma was an ethical telepath now …?" Nate asked in a meek voice.
Jean waved her index finger in his face. It was her mom-way of counting to three. Nate sighed. Arguing with Jean was futile. She would eventually make you believe there was no argument to begin with.
She crossed her arms in a self-satisfied manner as she levitated the teapot with her mind and poured herself a cup of steaming tea in mid-air. "Now, you better hurry along – don't want to keep your students waiting." She made a shooing motion in his direction. "It is the first actual day of classes at your daycare. You want to set a good example for all those eager little learners."
Nate did a lot of huffing as he got up, partly because he was ticked off and partly because he was so massive that, seated at Jean's breakfast table, he looked like a grown man squeezed in at a toddler's tea-party.
"Oh, and Nathan," Jean called as he headed out the door. "You really shouldn't worry about Domino causing any drama being here. I've known long before now you haven't the slightest interest in rekindling things with your ex-girlfriends, nice girl though Neena is, and I've made her understand that, more or less."
Nate froze, sensing danger. He glanced nervously over his shoulder at his stepmom who was trying to stifle a smirk into her teacup.
"I know TJ Wagner has you wrapped around her six little fingers," Jean stated.
This was just too much. "Jean! You swore to me you didn't -! You couldn't-! Go inside my thoughts!" Unlike many other people, Nate had been trained since childhood to erect and maintain mental barriers to keep from projecting his stronger thoughts and emotions to any psychics nearby. He wouldn't "let slip" his private thoughts about Talia, not even to a powerful telepath like Jean Grey.
"No, no. That's true. But maybe next time be a little less conspicuous and a bit more verbally quiet when you're flexing in front of the bathroom mirror."
Nate's jaw dropped. He had no idea whether to be livid at his stepmom for overhearing his spoken admirations of the lovely Ms. Natalia, furious at himself for speaking his very private thoughts aloud (for, like many telepaths, Nate sometimes took for granted that he could outthink anyone and that made his tongue lose and careless) or eternally grateful to Jean for not bringing this up around Rachel. Nate's half-sister would make this revelation ten times worse.
As he was mulling over these thoughts in his mind, Jean closed the door behind him with a gentle telekinetic click.
Next time: School's. In. Forever.