xp_logs | Tuesday afternoon: Adrienne and Terry

Terry returns from Ireland with gifts for her suitemate. They chat about family and discover mutual Daddy issues.

Adrienne heard the door to the suite open and assumed that Terry had returned, and though she gave a silent, thankful prayer she'd returned the main room to semi-presentable condition earlier in the day upon anticipating Terry's arrival, she couldn't bring herself to leave her bed to greet her roommate, cocooned as she was by the mess of papers spread around her. The quiz she'd handed out yesterday had yielded plenty of marking for her to do, and the rather tedious, inane task was vaguely comforting. Marking was safe.

"No broken glasses this time!" she called out to Terry proudly, trying not to shout.

"Aye, that's a relief then." Terry laughed, hearing the triumph in Adrienne's voice. Despite the long plane ride and the worry of the last few days while the crisis had played out beyond her ability to contribute, Terry's mood was rather a good one. "I've brought you something from home. I could use a hand if you're free." You wouldn't think that a few seedlings would be so weighty but impossibly, they were.

"Ooo, presents!" The prospect of gifts outweighed Adrienne's need for security, and she flung her duvet off of her instantly, scattering papers as she hopped out of bed and hurried into the main room. She gave Terry an awkward smile- she'd developed a sort of... toleration (never willing to admit to anything that might be misconstrued as friendliness) for the Irish lass, and aside from the kidnapping, drug-kingpin-hunting, and battle against pirates, things had been sort of quiet without Terry around. "I still don't see why you'd come back here when the summer's just beginning," she muttered, plastering on a frown for appearance's sake. Her smile returned when she spotted the flat of seedlings, however, and she rushed to take them from her suitemate. "Are those for me?"

"Oh, I've projects here. It's not ideal but that's the way of things." Terry sighed in relief as Adrienne relieved her of the burden. As it always was right when she got home, her accent was much stronger, lilting and quick, "Thank god, I thought my arm was about to fall off. I did promise that I'd have Bobby order them for you. You've no idea what it took to get them here."

Adrienne grimaced in acknowledgment. "Oh, I have some idea. Why do you think I asked you to do it for me?" she said with a wicked grin, placing the flat on the coffee table so she could sit on the couch and investigate the plants more closely. "Um... need a hand with your luggage or something?" she added as an afterthought, feeling somewhat guilty about absorbing herself in her gift and ignoring Terry.

"No luggage to speak of," Terry replied cheerfully, setting down her laptop bag, the only other thing she was carrying. "That's the advantage of going home no matter which way you're traveling. You can pack light. Do you like them?"

"I do," the psychometrist replied happily, handling one of the red valerians carefully with her gloves. "Thank you." She set the plant down and picked up one of the avens instead, inspecting carefully. "I just hope I can get them up to my place in Boston before they die out. I was away a bit last week-" getting kidnapped and fighting pirates, she thought to herself with a scowl "-so the authorities might not be too willing to let me leave New York again anytime soon." Since Terry already knew about her... situation... with the NYPD Adrienne didn't feel too awkward mentioning her current obstacle- she felt almost certain the redhead wouldn't give her a self-righteous lecture or simper at her.

"Bobby's family's in Boston. It's nearly time for me to go get my semi-annual abuse session for stealing their precious boy off to a foreign country. If you can't get up there, I'd be happy to drop them by." Terry threw herself onto the sofa, sprawling over an amazing amount of space for such a small person. "I've been reading the mission reports. That's a rather eventful way to celebrate your first month here, I suppose."

Adrienne nodded gratefully at her suitemate for the offer of dropping the plants by, then had to laugh at Terry's last statement. "Well, I came here in the middle of a poetry epidemic, so I suppose I should have guessed how things would be by the end of my first month. You... you know what happened, correct? I'm not going to get a 'what the fuck are you doing talking about it?' email sent my way for saying anything to you? Not that I care about emails, but I'd rather avoid them if I can."

Terry just looked amused, "I'm full team, Ms Frost. Yes, I know what happened. I was advised that my help wasn't required and that I could stay on my vacation. I'm looking forward to reading the full write ups. It's like something out of a SciFi Channel original. Of course, so was the time black ops broke into the mansion and shot us with tranqs and that wasn't any fun either."

Petting the leaves of the plant in her hand absently, Adrienne stared at a spot on the floor. "'Not fun' is quite the understatement," she said quietly. "I don't know how you people keep volunteering for things like that time and time again." She returned her gaze to Terry and plastered a careless smile on her face. "Once was more than enough for me, and I only went a second time because there was a promise of cocaine as a reward." She figured Terry could detect the lie in her voice about the reward thing, but the pithy comment made her feel less like a whimpering child in the face of the weakness she was admitting to.

"Oh, we're all barking mad. It's not something that sane people enjoy doing I should think. Me, I grew up with an uncle who thought that second story jobs were just the place for seven year old." She lifted an arm and wiggled her fingers, "Small hands." The lie didn't bother her, most of the time she wouldn't call someone on it. The first time was just because Adrienne had been asking for it and she'd been a bit testy.

Adrienne felt herself relaxing a little at Terry's admission that the X-Men were all mad and that sane people shouldn't be expected to enjoy it. "You know, that makes me feel loads better, actually. Garrison seems to think it was no big deal, what happened, but..." she trailed off with a shrug, not about to admit that she'd spent the majority of her time since the kidnapping- when she wasn't off fighting pirates- curled up in bed jumping at every shadow she saw and every noise she heard. "Your uncle was a criminal, and now you're majoring in Criminal Justice? How does he feel about that?" she scoffed curiously, changing the subject.

Terry smiled, "Garrison's Canadian," she said as though that explained everything. "Ah, Tom's in jail, I'm afraid. Life of crime caught up with him. But, aye, he's proud of me. He raised me to do what I loved, not just to do what he wanted." She gave Adrienne a curious look, "It's all a bit convoluted, are you sure you're wanting to hear my life's story?"

Shrugging again, Adrienne replaced the plant she was holding in the flat and picked up another one. "As long as we're not playing 'quid pro quo' and I don't have to say anything about mine. And as long as you don't mind," she added as an afterthought, all-too-aware that not everyone enjoyed talking about their past. Hearing Terry's life's story kept her from thinking of kidnapping and pirates, so Adrienne welcomed it. "Why did your uncle raise you?"

"I'm dying of curiosity but I pry enough just overhearing things. Hang on a minute while I fix some tea and I'll tell you." The redhead hopped off the couch and went to the kitchen, chattering as she walked. "Sean, my father, used to work for Interpol. He was away on an assignments a lot. When I was about a year old, my mother and I were caught in a bombing. She didn't survive. They told Sean that I hadn't either. Truth was, Tom had taken me. He raised me as his own for the first ten years of my life. Learned to pick locks before I could tie my own shoes."

"And I thought my childhood was fucked up," Adrienne muttered under her breath, forgetting about Terry's exceptional hearing. "Your uncle seems like a bit of an asshole, stealing you away like that," she said in a regular volume, ignoring completely the redhead's comment about overhearing things. If she didn't press Terry about it what she'd overheard, there was no chance the psychometrist could get angry in response to it and ruin the not-entirely-unpleasant visit they seemed to be having. "Is your father still alive, then? Did you ever reconnect with him?"

"I had a wonderful childhood," Terry said with just the faintest hint of sharpness in her tone. "Uncle Tom loves me and wants the best for me. He's got a bit of rivalry with my father but he never took it out on me. Even if Sean had known I was alive, he'd not have had time for me." She poured the water for her tea, focusing on the steam. "When I was 10, Tom was caught out on a job. I had a presentation in school the next day so I wasn't with him. The garda called Sean. I lived with him for the next year. We...didn't get along very well so he sent me here. Hadn't been home again until a couple years back."

Hearing the story, the trace of sharpness in Terry's tone surprised Adrienne into silence. "Hey, did Emma arrange for us to room together?" she asked after a lengthy silence, with forced lightness, "'cuz Emma thinks I have daddy issues. 'Seems like something she'd do, putting two people with similar issues together. At least tell me yours is still sane." A little quid pro quo, then, for the sake of the sharpness in Terry's voice.

"If she did, that would be news to me," Terry smiled, forcing the defensiveness away. She knew how easy it was to conflate 'criminal' with 'bad parent'. Her temper just occasionally leaped on without her. "Sean's sane as they come. Lawman, straight arrow, great taste in music. I hated him for a long time. We're getting on better these days."

"How nice for you both," Adrienne muttered with a trace of sharpness in her own tone. She suddenly didn't want to hear any more. "Can we talk about how barking mad all you X-Men types are instead?" she asked, rising from the sofa to join Terry in the kitchenette. "Or Ireland? Or where your husband's family lives in Boston?"

"Sure, we can." Terry said, feeling a little guilty though it was hardly her fault that she'd managed to reconcile with Sean. "It's some rich suburb of Boston. All very proper and old. His brother's FOH, so going to visit is always a bit tricky now that they know what we are. When he told them...well, they asked if he could stop. As though being a mutant's something you can just give up."

Adrienne frowned thoughtfully as she leaned against the countertop, facing Terry. "I'd give it up if I could." The malfunctions and headaches wouldn't be missed, that was for sure. "What's FOH?"

"Friends of Humanity. They're an anti-mutant organization. Count yourself lucky that you've never run into them. Ronnie got involved with them a few years back," Terry shook her head, "Broke Bobby's heart."

"Yeah, it really blows when siblings turn evil," the psychometrist replied, trying for lightness once again as she took a beer from the fridge. "So what sort of shit do they do, these friendly, humane, anti-mutant types?"

Terry brought her tea back over to the living room, tumbling into an armchair and sipping thoughtfully before she responded, giving Adrienne the run down on the anti-mutant annoyance.