Chapter 3: Surprises
"What happened to you?" Jubilee blinked in surprise as Hank came down to breakfast the next morning very late indeed, with all his thick blue fur sticking up the wrong way.
"I believe someone may have spiked the punch a bit too heavily last night, Jubilee," he said as she pulled out a chair for him and poured him a cup of black coffee. He took the aspirin she handed him and popped them in his mouth, swallowing them down with coffee as Scott came in with the morning's mail.
Jubilee took the envelope Scott handed her and ripped it open curiously, scanning it quickly. "Oh, wow! I've been invited to speak at the upcoming International Science summit!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I never thought I'd get an invitation!"
"Neither did I," Hank said in some surprise, staring at a similar letter. "I have also been invited, to speak on the biological variations that mutants have been taking."
"I've received an invitation as well," Xavier said, coming into the room on his hoverchair. "I must admit I expected Hank to be invited, but I had no idea you were so well-known, Dr. Lee." His eyes twinkled. "Would you prefer to travel separately, or will you accompany Hank and I on my private plane?"
Jubilee grinned. "Private plane sounds great," she said.
Logan walked in at just that moment, stifling a yawn and rubbing his eyes. "Private plane for what? Where?"
Jubilee kissed him as she shoved his coffee into his wandering hand. He pulled her into a hug, almost spilling the contents of the mug as he kissed her and ruffled her still-disheveled hair. "Charles and Hank have both been invited to the International Science Summit in Brussels. I got an invitation too. Charles was just asking me if I wanted to accompany them in his plane, or if I wanted to arrange my own transportation."
"When is it?" Logan said.
Jubilee scanned the letter quickly. "The eighteenth of November," she said finally.
Logan grimaced. "Well, I suppose I could put off the trip up north I been promisin' myself," he said.
"'Put off'? Logan, you don't have to come!"
He looked hurt. "You don't want me to come?"
She spluttered for a moment, then found her voice. "No, I—I didn't mean that, I just thought…well, we're just going there for a week to speak, and the rest will be fairly boring, I thought…maybe…you wouldn't want to--" She stopped, flustered.
"I know what ya meant," Logan said, relenting and smiling at her. "But if ya'd like, I would be happy ta accompany you."
Jubilee turned to Xavier. "What do you think, Professor? Will they allow Logan in there?"
"Almost certainly," Xavier said with a twinkle in his eye. "I doubt he will be the first bodyguard accompanying their employers to the conference."
Jubilee looked startled at Xavier, then at Logan. "Bodyguard," she said finally. "Is that why you've been following me everywhere, Logan? You think I need protection?"
"Sabretooth ain't done wit' us yet, darlin'," Logan growled. "I jus' figured I'd keep an eye on ya an' keep ya safe."
Jubilee's blue eyes narrowed. "I'm not a little girl, Logan," she said angrily. "I can take care of myself. Sabretooth won't touch me here, and especially not in Belgium. So if you'd rather go running through the woods, go right on ahead, because I don't need you to watch over me in a conference full of other people." She turned and marched out of the kitchen, taking her letter and her coffee with her. "Men," they heard her mutter just before the door closed.
Logan sighed. "Women." He looked at Hank and Xavier, and saw the same look of exasperation in their eyes. "How'm I gonna patch things up this time?"
* * *
Remy was in his room getting dressed when there was a tap on the door and Logan walked in. Remy took one look at Logan's face and knew something was wrong. "What wrong, mon ami?" he said.
Logan sighed. "Jubes an' I got into a fight," he said. "She foun' out I been followin' her aroun' everywhere cause I didn' want Sabretooth ta git her, an' she got upset. I wanna apologise, but I don' know how."
Remy thought. "Well, dere's flowers, but Jubes ain't the flowery type. There's candy, but she gon' know it wasn' your idea. How 'bout a necklace or somethin"? Remember de firs' time Scott an' Jean get into a fight, an' Scott bought her dat emerald ring she like so much? Maybe you git Jubes somethin' like dat."
Logan felt out-of-place in the jewelry store, uncomfortable, much the way a bull in a china shop would feel. He looked into the brightly-lit displays, bewildered by the wide assortment of sparkling jewelry, wondering how on earth he was going to find something for Jubilee in all this stuff.
A nicely-dressed saleswoman walked up to him. 'Can I help you find anything, Sir?" she asked politely.
Hmm. Maybe she could. "Uh, yeah. I'm lookin' fer somethin' fer my girlfriend." It was the first time he'd referred to Jubilee as his girlfriend, and it felt odd.
"A marriage proposal?" the saleswoman prodded.
"Naw, just a gift. We jus' got inta a fight, an' I wanna make up."
The salesgirl brought out a number of rings, bracelets, and necklaces, but Logan didn't see anything Jubilee might like. She had a necklace she adored; a sapphire drop pendant that matched her eyes, and he had some vague idea of finding something that would match the necklace, but he didn't see anything like it. Thanking the saleswoman for her help, he wandered out of the store.
He headed for the front door of the mall, swearing silently. He should have brought the Cajun with him; Remy knew what girls liked. He didn't.
He sighed, and walked into another jewelry shop. This one was busier. He wandered around the cases, looking but not really expecting, to find something for Jubilee. He stopped suddenly in front of a full case of sapphires. There was a pair of sapphire drop earrings, exactly like her necklace, but with tiny diamonds set into the edge of the stones. They would be perfect. He knew she'd like them.
"Can I help you with anything?" said the saleswoman when she came over.
He pointed to the earrings. "Yeah," he said. "I want those."
She unlocked the case, took out the earrings, and produced a little velvet box for them. As she did so, she said casually, "We have a ring that matches these. If you take them all together, we can give you the clearance price on the set." Without waiting for his answer, she reached into the back of the case and brought out a small gold band with two teardrop shaped sapphires on either side of an oval-cut sapphire. Logan looked at it, trying to envision it around Jubilee's finger.
"Okay," he said. The saleswoman rang up the jewelry, and he walked out of the store feeling victorious.
The feeling evaporated halfway home when he stopped to consider the possibility that she might not like it. As hard as he tried to put the thought out of his head, it kept coming back. By the time he parked his bike in the garage, he was a nervous wreck. He peeked into the bag one last time, then steeled himself and went up to their room.
Jubilee wasn't there.
He breathed a sigh, half of relief that she wasn't there, and half of regret that he couldn't just give it to her and get it all over with. He opened the tiny velvet boxes again, looked inside. The earrings would definitely be okay, but the ring…
The bedroom door opened behind him and he spun around, hiding the two tiny boxes behind his back. Jubilee walked in, reading something on a sheet of paper absently, then put the paper down on her desk. Only then did she look up and see him standing by the dresser, red as a beet and holding something behind his back. "What are you hiding?" she asked.
"Uh, nothin'," Logan said, closing his fists around the little boxes. His face flushed brighter with the lie, and she noticed.
"Come on," she said, her tone light as she walked across the room and tugged his hands from behind his back. "What are you hiding?" She uncurled his fingers from around one of the boxes and opened it. Logan squeezed his eyes shut, expecting an explosion. When he didn't hear anything, he opened one eye.
Jubilee was staring at the sapphire earrings, her eyes wide in delight. Her mouth opened and closed several times speechlessly, and then she found her voice. "Logan, they're…beautiful," she whispered, touching them. "Wow. I've been looking for something like these for a while to match my necklace. How did you find these?" Then she gasped again as he opened the other box and gave it to her. "Logan…"
He held up a hand. "It ain't an engagement ring or nothin'," he said. "Jus' a present. They were part of a set, the saleswoman said, an' I could get 'em both at a lower price than I could getting' 'em separate." He took a breath. "Uh, I used the bankcard ta the account ya put my name on. Is that okay?"
Jubilee threw back her head and laughed. "I was wondering when you were going to use that account," she chuckled. "I kept putting more money into it, hoping you'd use it, and you never did…until you wanted to buy something for me." She laughed and threw her arms around him, squeezing him in a hug that made his ribs creak. "I love you, Logan."
Jean's eyes popped when she saw the pretty sapphires on Jubilee's hand at dinner that evening. ""Wow," she said. "Jubilee, they're gorgeous! Logan, how ever did you find them?" Ororo had a similar reaction.
Jubilee laughed again when they went up to their room. She sat down at her desk as Logan stretched out on the bed. "They're the most gorgeous things, Logan, I love them. And I love you." She kissed him as she got undressed, then sat back down at her desk and started flipping through one of the books on the table. For a while there was nothing but the sound of turning pages, the TV, and the scratching of a pen. When Jubilee turned away from the speech she was preparing for the summit to ask Logan a question, she discovered he was asleep.
Smiling, she got up and switched off her desk light, picked up the remote and switched off the TV, then slid into bed beside Logan and pulled the covers up over him. She snuggled into bed behind him, wrapped her legs around him, and whispered, "I love you," before she fell asleep.
Logan woke in the middle of the night, suddenly. Something had disturbed him, and it took a moment to figure out what it was. There was a distant sound of alarms going off downstairs. He recognized that sound; the mansion's intruder alarms. He slipped out of bed silently, stuffing a pillow down into the bed in front of Jubilee to simulate himself. Very rarely did she have a peaceful night's sleep, and he didn't want to ruin this one for her.
All up and down the hall doors were opening and slamming, and the X-Men were racing downstairs to the War Room, the room that held all the security defenses for the mansion. Xavier was already there, dressed similarly in pajamas and manipulating the cameras grimly, looking for the cause of the alarms. "Wait," Ororo stopped him suddenly. "There." Xavier stopped moving the camera on the mansion's west wing and backtracked until Ororo stopped him again. "There," she said.
The bushes edging the treeline bordering the west side of Xavier's property suddenly parted, and Sabretooth stepped into view. He obviously knew that they knew he was there, because he spread his arms out and roared.
"Show yerself, runt!" he howled.
Logan took off at a dead run, ignoring Xavier's sharp "Logan!" He flung open the front door and skidded to a stop, barely noticing the chill early November air on his bare skin as he faced Sabretooth.
Sabretooth grinned. "Hey, runt," he said, grinning unpleasantly. "Did I interrupt ya messin' wit' da frail?"
Logan put a deep growl in his voice. "Git it all outta yer system, Creed, so we can git to the shreddin' part."
Creed laughed. "Me shreddin' ya or you shreddin' me? Or is that me shreddin' ya girl? I'd love that last part almost more than the first part, but as fer you shreddin' me, it ain't happenin'."
"Damn right it won't," came a clear, ringing female voice, and Logan looked up to see Jubilee standing in the open window of their bedroom, in her uniform. "There won't be enough left of you for Logan to shred when I get done with you."
Sabretooth laughed harshly. "Well, ya can try," he said. "Come on down here an' join da party, frail."
Logan nearly yelled when Jubilee jumped out of that window. It was nearly thirty feet from the ground! But she didn't fall like a stone, as he expected. She drifted down and landed gracefully onto the grass like a falling leaf, and he only realized she'd used her powers when she walked over to stand beside him and he saw her eyes glowing. How the hell did she do that? he wondered, but he didn't have time to speculate. Jubilee was moving quickly on the balls of her feet, moving lightly over the moonlight-silvered lawn toward Sabretooth.
Sabretooth dropped quickly into a crouch position, notwithstanding his earlier taunts about shredding her. Jubilee stalked silently around Sabretooth, never taking her eyes off him. When he lunged for her, she ducked easily. They circled again as Logan joined them. This time, Sabretooth lunged for Logan, who ran forward as Sabretooth ran towards him. His claws scored the side of the bigger man's ribs, and Sabretooth howled in anger and pain, turning and lunging for Logan again. Jubilee raised her hands and sent a multi-colored stream toward him, which exploded on contact and hurled Sabretooth back into the treeline. Losing his temper completely, Sabretooth ran towards her where she stood by the huge trunk of an old oak tree. "Jubilee! Look out!" Logan yelled, but she just stood there, facing Sabretooth. He started to run toward them..a few steps, just a few more…
But Sabretooth was going to reach her before she did. And why was she just standing there, with that queer glitter in her eyes…Sabretooth was…
Sabretooth's head rammed into the trunk of a tree, and he fell to the ground at its foot, dazed. When he and Logan looked up to see where Jubilee had gone, they discovered that she was standing, on air, about a foot over Creed's head, laughing mockingly. She touched down lightly at the base of another tree, and Sabretooth lunged for her again.
It took running into four trees before Sabretooth gave up his rush-and-grab offense, which was plainly not working. Jubilee simply skipped from tree to tree, allowing him to pummel his own head into unconsciousness. When he finally fell over, dizzy and dazed, Jubilee walked over to him and scornfully kicked him. "Stay away from us," she snarled at him, in a credible imitation of Logan. "You're never going to succeed trying to beat the crap out of us, so save yourself some broken bones and concussions and near-death experiences and get the hell outta here. You're disturbing my sleep." She turned and started to walk away.
Sabretooth uncoiled from the ground and rushed forward, trying to catch her in his arms. Jubilee didn't even turn around; she simply jumped into the air as if she were trying to hop the stairs at the mansion three at a time, and landed on air about two feet above his head. As he stared, dumbfounded, at her, she released another stream of pyrotechnics at him and slammed his head into the ground.
He got up, shaking his head, and scowled. "You ain't heard the last of me yet!" he screamed at her retreating back.
She laughed scornfully. "Go ahead, kitty. Hiss all you like. You're not going to get anywhere making all that noise." She sent a blast of technicolor sparks at the ground under him, causing the ground to explode under him and fling him into the air. Once in midair, she sent another stream of her fireworks at him and caught him broadside, sending him soaring out over the middle of the lake. When her power 'paf'ed out, he fell several feet into the middle of the cold, near-frozen lake.
Logan swallowed hard as he grabbed her shoulders. "Are you all right?" he said. Her eyes, still glowing with her power, looked blankly at him for a moment before the glow faded and her reason returned. "Jubilee, how did you do that?"
Ororo was the first of the other X-Men to reach her. "Jubilee! Are you all right? How did you do that? I didn't know you could fly!" but explanations had to wait until they got her in. The intense heat generated by the use of her powers left her feeling cold, and she was shivering.
She tried to explain as Logan sat her down in a kitchen chair and Ororo shoved a cup of steaming tea into her hand. "I found I could crate breezes by heating a small section of air up to make a wind. I can't do it on anything close to the scale you can, Storm, but it's come in handy sometimes. Then I wondered if I could make it do the same thing, but in reverse. I tried to freeze atoms in midair. It took a few tries, but I eventually managed to 'freeze' enough atoms quickly enough to make a sot of floating 'platform' in the air. It's not flying, like you and Rogue…but it gets me out of the way quick enough. I'd never tried it in battle before, though," she said. "Tonight was the first time, but I figured if it didn't work, Logan would be there to take care of me." She reached out, took Logan's hand, and squeezed it gratefully. "Thanks, Logan. I'm sorry I got mad at you for being a 'bodyguard'. I do need it, and I'd love it if you came to Brussels with me."