Monday evening: Terry and Adrienne

[x-siryn.livejournal.com]

Terry gets home after a long day of transatlantic travel and discovers her broken glasses. Adrienne fails the apology test but the new roommates manage to have a friendly conversation anyway.



Though Terry never regretted the whirlwind trips home, particularly not when there was an occasion to celebrate, the first day back was always murder. She'd hit the tarmac at an ungodly hour, breezing through customs with her lack of luggage and been in the car heading to her first class before most people were waking up on this coast. One deathly boring lecture later, survived mostly by under the desk texting to Bobby who was sitting through an equally boring meeting with the landscapers, she broke for a study group, then lunch, then back to more classes. By the time she got back to the mansion, she absolutely wiped out. She yawned her way to the kitchenette, tugged a bottle of juice from the fridge and turned to grab a glass from the cupboard. Empty. So was the dishwasher.

Terry's brain refused to process the mystery of the missing cups, throwing up mental hands in defeat and suggesting that perhaps they'd gained sentience and gone to join the circus.

Barricaded in her room in attempt to finish proofing a pitch one of her underlings had made to Vogue magazine about a summer spread, Adrienne heard Terry enter the suite but remained on her bed with her laptop rather than getting up to greet the younger woman. She heard Terry open the fridge, then a cupboard, then the dishwasher. Assuming the redhead was searching in vain for the one of the glasses she'd broken yesterday, Adrienne yelled: "use a coffee mug! I've ordered some new glasses; they'll be here sometime today!" She glanced at the time log on her computer- it was already late afternoon... the delivery company probably should have had the new glasses here by now...

Terry winced and put the juice away before walking over to Adrienne's door and knocking perfunctorily before opening it. Suspecting she looked as exhausted as she felt, she just regarded her new suitemate for a moment. When she spoke, it was low and measured, just a bit more heavily accented than her usual lilt, "Firstly, I can hear you just fine. There's no reason to shout. Secondly, what happened to the perfectly decent glasses that I had before I left on Friday?"

"Christ, you look like hell," Adrienne exclaimed calmly, eyebrow raised with an unstated question. "The glasses were the unfortunate victims of my baseball-induced wrath. I've ordered new ones," she added, sounding bored, "they should be here soon."

Terry rubbed her eyes, thinking that she was too old to have to deal with this and then remembering that she wasn't even twenty. Maybe this is what living with old people did to you? "Let me get this straight. You move into my suite, insult me, accuse me of being a spy for some unspecified reason that you'll notice I didn't ask about and now you've broken my things without so much as an I'm sorry? Miss Frost, you're a bloody terrible roommate."

Adrienne's eyes narrowed at being called a terrible roommate and she set her laptop aside to focus on Terry. "I never asked to move in here," she reminded the younger woman, "and it's not as if they handed me some fucking manual on how to be a perfect roommate when I got here." Contemplating leaving her statement at that, she paused. Better not, she decided with a frown, worrying slightly about pissing Terry off so completely that Terry refused to room with her and she was forced to leave the school and stay in police custody. "I had no idea you were required to purchase the furnishings for the suite yourself and therefore claimed ownership of them. I'm sorry," she muttered, squirming uncomfortably at the word.

"That didn't work as an excuse for me when I moved in here either and I was eleven, not..." Terry narrowed her eyes, considered what she knew of Emma, "thirty-five." Before her temper could really get the better of her, she considered that Adrienne probably really was trying and it would be fair to at least give her a chance. "In any case, aye, those were my glasses though the school does provide some dish ware if needed. That's mostly for the students though. I'm sorry for snapping, it's been a long day and my last class got completely derailed when some idiot brought up that assassination. That was a mess."

She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "I don't care so much about the glasses. But I'd like to get a little respect from you, if you don't mind. I can hear perfectly well that you don't like me or this place but it's my home, all right?"

"I am not thirty-five," Adrienne corrected grumpily. She had two entire years before she hit that unwanted milestone. Still, she found the bulk of her anger had deflated upon hearing Terry admit to using the same excuse she'd tried. So Terry had once been in the same situation, it seemed. It wasn't often that the businesswoman recognized that there were other people in the world who'd had the same experiences as herself, but on the rare occasions when she did, Adrienne found it difficult to continue snapping at the other person.

Considering Terry's request for respect, Adrienne reached under her bed and pulled two lukewarm beer bottles out of a case, holding one out to the redhead. "No glasses required," she pointed out, and pondered why it was that everyone was so damned protective of the school. "Just because I don't wander around showering praise on everyone I meet doesn't mean I don't respect this place, or you."

Terry hesitated, weighing her promise to Bobby against the symbolic weight of turning down the peace offering. She offered him a silent apology and smiled, "Thanks for that." The beer wouldn't even give her a buzz, though it might put her to sleep. Good enough, she could use it. "Maybe you don't hate it but sure and it's hard to hear anything else in your voice. And I've got better hearing than most people."

She folded herself to the floor in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. "Why are you here, then? I doubt it was a burning desire to teach math to young mutants."

Opening her beer and taking a long sip, Adrienne frowned at Terry. She'd forgotten about her roommate's mutant ability and had never before considered what someone else could hear in her voice beyond being careful to mask the bulk of her displeasure or boredom in a conversation. "I don't hate it," she said in her own defense, but under the circumstances she wasn't terribly upset that hatred was the only thing Terry could hear in her voice. Better hatred than fear, after all. "Maybe I've just hated so many things for so many years that my voice just pours hatred into everything I say?" She took another sip of her beer as she let the suggestion linger in the air. With a smirk, she answered Terry's last question in the most obviously untrue voice she could muster. "I'm here because I'm hiding out from facing a rap for murder."

Terry sipped the beer and looked at Adrienne, turning that over in her head. Then she took a guess. "Sure you're in the right place then. We've got an assortment doing the same. Is it really hiding out when the police know where you are though?" She set down the beer next to her, tipping it one way and the other with a fingertip. "The thing about telling lies, Miss Frost, is that more than your voice changes when you tell them. You're not lying." She smiled sweetly.

Silence ensued as Adrienne drank her beer, struggling to control her desire to run away as her 'fight or flight' response kicked in. "I was lying," she assured the younger woman when she was more composed. "I'm not hiding; like you said, they know where I am. And I'm not facing a rap for murder." Not exactly. "My husband was killed in a mugging, and one of my business competitors thought it would give him an edge to accuse me of the crime. I'm here until my name's been cleared. That's all. How was Ireland?" she asked, mirroring the redhead's sweet smile.

"Lovely, as usual. Have you ever been? When the sun's out, it's so green right now it hurts your eyes to look at it." Having gotten something near the truth, Terry cheerfully let Adrienne change the subject. "Course even in the rain it's a beautiful country. Hurts a little more every time I've got to leave again. You'll have the place to yourself a bit after school lets out, speaking of which. I'll be going back to help Bobby out. It's the high season soon."

"Ach, old Irish Eyes," the brunette replied in her worst impression of an Irish accent, shameless; "I be an aficionado of beauty in all its forms. People, clothes... okay, mostly people and clothes," she muttered, speaking normally, "but I appreciate all beautiful things. Of course I've been to Ireland." She finished off her beer and put it on the nightstand next to the two others she'd already polished off since classes had ended for the day. Scrutinizing the empty bottles, she suddenly she understood where the Irish impersonation had originated. "I try to make a point of heading north every year when I go to London for the spring shows," she continued, turning back to Terry. "I like to smuggle plant cuttings home with me from Ireland to grow at my place in Boston. And if you tell anyone I garden, I'll kill you," she added thoughtfully.

"No, you won't," Terry returned cheerfully, still mostly just playing with her beer. "They're already watching you, aren't they? Would look suspicious if I turned up dead. You should talk to Ms. Munroe about gardening. She's brilliant with plants." She shifted, pulling her knees to her chest, "Funny you should bring that up actually. Bobby was in a meeting today with the landscapers. Should I have him order you something in particular? We're redoing the gardens, they're a bit tattered."

Adrienne nearly replied that she could easily make Terry's murder look like an accident the way she'd done before, but she managed to bite her tongue. "No one's watching me," she said instead, "unless you lied and you work for them." She contemplated another beer, but instead slid off the bed onto the floor and took Terry's. "I don't want to talk to anyone about gardening. We're not talking about gardening. But I could use some more avens and my red valerian died out last year. Why are your gardens tattered?"

Terry watched with an amused look as her beer vanished then leaned back against the doorjamb again. "No gardening. Got it. It's nothing much, just that they've gotten a bit dated without holding authenticity. Bobby's restoring them to something a bit more in keeping with the Keep's history."

"I've been on a tour of the Keep's grounds, actually," Adrienne pointed out after she'd finished off Terry's beer, "a few years ago. I have to agree with you about the 'dated' thing, honestly. Good idea to restore them." She copied Terry's pose and leaned back, against the wall, musing on the fact that she was having an almost friendly conversation with someone and their topic wasn't to do with her business. And it wasn't entirely detestable.

The ringing of her cell phone stopped the thoughts from compounding in Adrienne's head. "Delivery guy's downstairs with the new glasses," she announced after listening for less than a minute and flipping the phone closed, though she lingered on the floor rather than jumping up to go meet him.

Terry's eyes had lit up when Adrienne mentioned visiting the Keep. "Sure you'll have to come back. We've done a great deal toward restoring it in the last year. Sean started repairs a couple years ago but Bobby's really jumped whole heartedly into making the place really lovely again. It's strange, I thought it would make it seem like less of a family home but it hasn't at all. It's more homey than the mansion is a lot of the time, I think." A soft smile crossed her face, expression faraway, "It'll be nice when I can stop splitting my time between here and home."

She sighed and pulled herself to her feet, "Not yet though. I should go get unpacked and start my homework. Thanks for the beer, Miss Frost."