I’ve got half a mind to liquify her mind
Who: Jean and Clint What: Coffee Encounters When: 5/3 Where: A coffee shop Status: Complete Rating: PG-13
Phenomenal Cosmic Power was rarely a good thing, and even though Jean was familiar with it, it was a lot different to experience it awake than otherwise. As real as the dream world felt, Jean still thought of this world as reality.
So to have the Phoenix manifest itself in her reality shattered a lot of illusions She didn’t know what was worse. That it had happened, or that she was sharing the load with Emma.
It let them try to be a little normal, at least. Though Jean was moving through life like an evil lit fuse, and even trying to get a latte was an exercise in patience.
Most of the time, Clint didn't exactly need coffee. He was wired up almost all the time as it was but coffee was required for that extra kick to get him through the day. Especially since he joined the Avengers and had to try and keep up with super soldiers and Gods.
The measly little human relying on caffeine was a necessary evil.
It was probably why he was a little impatient, waiting in line while someone ordered up some fancy, weird coffee and cream with flavouring concoction. Those things really just made him worry about the world.
“What’s taking so long?” Jean folded her arms, glaring at the person making a ridiculously complicated order. She didn’t even have any problems with milk, and she wasn’t exactly fat. There was no excuse for this. Worse, she kept berating the Barista. “I’ve got half a mind to liquify her mind.”
The fact that her eyes were leaking fire was probably a bad sign.
Usually it wasn’t strange that other people got a little testy, and Clint understood it. He didn’t see why this coffee needed to be so special, really. And if she was that picky, couldn’t she just do it herself? It was the second comment that had Clint twisting around with a look of befuddlement.
“Um… say what?” Liquefying brains was like a super big ‘holy shit’ way to go. And sure, maybe it was like a saying, like ‘I could kill a cheeseburger’ but the redhead looked real serious. “Do you… I mean… Do you know that your eyes are on fire?”
It seemed important to point out.
Something about Clint seemed familiar, and Jean could peel a mind like an onion. She … did at least try not to dig too deep. “I’m having a bad day, Clint.”
Jean lifted her hand and ran it through her hair. The fire in her eyes gradually disappeared, but the room seemed to rise a little in temperature. Perhaps the most annoying thing about this was the person she most wanted to express her frustration at wasn’t there.
It took Clint longer to place her than it took her to place him, but then he didn’t have nifty tricks. He hadn’t really been that embroiled with the Jean Grey saga at all, but he knew Logan pretty well in the dreams to understand it all. “Join the club.” Honestly? He could see why a guy as long lived as Wolverine would be an idiot for a woman like this.
Even without the intense fire eyes and wickedly powerful vibe.
“Could we maybe not liquify people’s brains though? Like just as a standard no zone?” He wondered how exactly he’d explain not getting involved in that. ‘Well Natasha, I’ve been incinerated by one Phoenix, I didn’t want my brain turned more gooey by the other one.’ Might not float.
Jean let out an exasperated sigh. “I’ll only liquify a brain if they deserve it.” Like child molesters and people who talk in movie theaters.
On a good day, she’d be more pleasant, so she tried at least to give Clint a smile and calm her tits. This wasn’t her dreams. She hadn’t killed a man she loved, she hadn’t attacked Logan with kisses and then flung him against a wall because she was going to murder Charles Xavier and she sure wasn’t going to go eat the sun.
Eating the sun would be bad all around. “Girlscout’s honor. So how are you doing?”
Small talk. That was good. She could do small talk…
Girlscouts…. Right. Clint could cope, glancing back towards the picky coffee order woman with a small wince. She better just accept things soon else she’d get a feel for how slow roasted coffee beans felt.
“Oh, you know, dreaming shit, living shit, running late for work and hoping to hell nothing insane is happening in the next, oh? Four hours?” Because that would just really suck. The plus side was that there wasn’t anything big lately, at least not since Shepard’s alien nemesis fell from the sky to try and … what, eat the world? Hard to tell what the fuck Reapers were if he were honest.
“Um… You?” He had a feeling that she’d been better.
The woman was oblivious to her imminent danger, and continued to argue with the barista. They’d reached the semantics level and Jean’s left eye literally twitched.
“Haven’t run late for work in awhile.” On a day she thought she might be late, Jean just flew in. “Kids have been good. Living with Emma has been… great. Cosmic firebirds, not so great.”
Cosmic firebirds were never great.
While Clint’s understanding of the Phoenix was greatly limited to ‘that time someone thought we should have a cross-over’, it wasn’t exactly the best of times for him. He’d gotten fried, and honestly, he’d liked to know why it was team-mates that killed him. For all that the X-Men weren’t ‘team mates’ they were on the same side (most of the time). So the friendly fire -literally- wasn’t overly appreciated.
Psycho bird force or not.
“I can see why a cosmic entity the feeds off suns would not be a great way to start, or end, a day.” And coffee lady really needed to just take her drink.
“We have it handled,” Jean assured him. Or about as handled as anyone could when it came to the Phoenix. It was just a matter of dealing with it day to day while trying to think of any way to send it someplace else,or somewhen else. Though Jean was growing more and more into the power. It felt like it belonged.
“Okay,” he drew the word out a little, glancing over as the problem woman finally took her carefully crafted coffee and the line could start moving again. “So, liquefying brains is like your default go to when waiting in line? I mean, it’s not a leap. Totally under control?”
Even Clint only considered shooting people holding up lines in really serious situations.
“Only in special circumstances,” Jean said, shooting a look at the woman and giving her the mental suggestion that drinking coffee would always make her have to pee within twenty minutes. “Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to turn anyone’s brain into mushy peas. No matter how tempting the thought is when it comes to the political arena.”
“Special, right.” Okay, he could understand that, maybe. A little. “So, no sun eating or mind liquefying that sounds… Okay, that sounds reasonable.” He’d need to ask Natasha if that was reasonable, but he avoided actually thinking to do it. Not that he was paranoid, but telepaths. “Sounds like a healthy approach to things. Shame it doesn’t make you clairvoyant.” There was probably some kind of stipulation about personal gain there though.
“Try thinking of dancing penguins,” Jean suggested. “Knew a person who liked to do that and most telepaths wouldn’t bother to dig further.”
Either in amusement, annoyance, or sheer ‘what the fuck.’ She thought it was a good suggestion, and it was funny enough to her that it actually calmed her down.
“No, it doesn’t, but I could probably force the slots or the lottery to do whatever I wanted anyway, through a combination of telepathy and telekinesis.”
Penguins, dancing penguins, Clint could work with that. His eyebrow rose a little as he pondered that, rolling it over in his mind a little. “Sounds fun,” okay so, that was actually a neat trick, “Thanks.”
It was weird to think of how many things that telepaths or telekinetics could really get themselves by with, and how they didn’t, but Clint figured that was probably their ethics rather than anything else. As it approached his turn for coffee, Clint just gave the barista a small nod, being that he was fairly regular in every coffee shop in the area they knew he just took a large black, nothing hard there at all. “I guess we should be thankful this isn’t Vegas then, huh? Or y’know, not. I’m not sure if that’d be bad or good.”
Jean smiled thoughtfully. “There’s a lot we could do with a few million. This school district alone could actually come into the 20th century. Maybe even the 21st.” It wasn’t as bad as New York, but it was still pretty bad. And that was a lot better of a motivation than wanting to melt someone’s brain. With the annoying woman’s absence, Jean was suddenly a lot less on edge. She wondered if she’d been picking up on her anger.
“Hey, a little philanthropy is good, you know, over all.” Kate was into that, giving back and what not, and Clint could get on board. He was sure there were ethical issues with knocking off a casino to fund education, but still, it wasn’t a bad way to go about it.
At least Jean didn’t look like she was going to strangle someone with her powers.
“Overall,” Jean agreed. At least she felt a lot better. One nuclear meltdown, avoided.