Vanessa and Adrienne - St. Patrick's Day (night)

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Libations are partaken of in honour of St. Patrick's Day. Vanessa gets drunk and nostalgic while Adrienne tries to watch both their asses (for reasons of safety!) in the neighbourhood where Vanessa's father was killed.


Never before had Adrienne witnessed Morgan drunk. Or Vanessa. She had rarely ever seen Vanessa out in public, but it was definitely Vanessa she was with tonight. And Vanessa was drunk. Usually she was the one who had too much to drink, while the blue woman with her Irish constitution matched her drink for drink and still managed to appear sober as a judge. Four pints ago Adrienne had started to believe it was possible that Vanessa was getting quite into the spirit of the Irish holiday. Now, she was wondering if Vanessa was actually possessed by one of said spirits. Adrienne had quit drinking three hours, and about six or seven pints ago, and remained quite proud of her own resolve. One of them had to keep their wits about them after all, since the Scottish Driver had flat-out refused to accompany them in celebrating St. Patrick's Day, drawing the line at driving them to Boston and pinning Adrienne's Boston address to her shirt collar in a pithy attempt to be amusing. The scrap of paper had disappeared long ago, but since Adrienne had decided to encourage Vanessa to express her ancestry and be the one of the pair to get drunk, Adrienne wasn't inebriated so Driver's precaution was unnecessary anyway.

The pub was finally closing, and Adrienne hauled on Vanessa's arm. "We need to go for a walk," she informed her companion. "Let's go walk some sense back into you." They were in an area of the city unfamiliar to Adrienne, at a pub chosen by Vanessa, but the psychometrist hoped her blue friend still retained some sense of direction.

Earlier in the day Vanessa had been on the phone with Eamon, Thom and Mike all at once who were moping over being on the job today. Mike cared a little less, he wasn't as tied to his Irish roots. Like Vanessa, Mike was third generation American but the other two were damn proud to have been born and raised on the emerald isle. Somehow she'd ended up making a promise to get "thoroughly bladdered" to them. Vanessa did not break promises. Which is how she ended up at Aces High in South Boston with Adrienne.

Some time before she'd hit her tenth pint Vanessa had busied herself with beating the idiots who didn't belong in the neighborhood to begin with at pool and taking all their money in the process. They were probably from fucking Andover or some bullshit. Snooty bitches. They wanted to slum it on St. Paddy's with the Irish working class and that was fine, but there was a charge and Vanessa had taken it upon herself to collect it. The fact that she'd only had been in the pub for half a minute before the Dublin accent Aoife spoke with found its way to Vanessa's lips and had remained there all the night. She might be blue but she sounded damn authentic.

"Oi! Who says I haven't any sense," was the protest that came from the idea of walking sense back into her when she realized Adrienne was tugging her away. A sad, longing look was given to her half full pint before she stretched her arm out to try to reach it. Fingers wiggled in the direction of the glass unless some bloke nearby slid it close enough for her to grab. "Cheers, mate!" She gave him a wide grin and at once downed the rest of her beer. The bartender managed to come over and grab the glass from her since it was a little unsure if she'd get it back on the bar or not with Adrienne dragging her off.

Vanessa slung her arm around Adrienne's shoulders and slumped against her. "Y'know, this works better with taller people. Where are tall people when I need them?!" She pouted and wrinkled her nose, realizing her words were slurring. "Or, y'know, boyfriend. I could get him to carry me. Such a boy scout. How'd I end up dating a boy scout? All sweet and polite. Aye, I'm going to corrupt him something rotten. Should I feel guilty about that?" She turned an inquisitive, slightly unfocused eye toward her friend for an answer.

"No, you should not feel guilty," Adrienne answered with certainty. "He should be corrupted. He is not the Boy Scout, though. You can't call him a Boy Scout because Kane is the Boy Scout in my mind and you should not confuse the two in my mind, please. And by all means, call him and get him to come carry you." She ducked away, dislodging herself from Morgan's weight suddenly, assuming that Vanessa would teeter without her. "You two can't come back to my place if you call him though- that whole rule about no one having sex in my house without my involvement still holds. You could just shift to Aoife so you're shorter than me, y'know, since you've been talking in the accent all night anyway," she suggested, rolling her eyes slightly and musing on how it was much more fun to be the drunk one as opposed to being the half-sober one.

"A not the. Besides," Vanessa stumbled with the loss of Adrienne's body to lean on. Some drunk, but more sober than she was, guy caught Ness 'round the waist and held her steady until she uprighted herself. Grinning to him, she gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks, love!" He toddled off and left Ness to walk on her own, which was a pity. Other people made it so much easier. "'Sides," she picked up her previous sentence where she'd left it off, "I don't think e counts as a boy scout anymore. Kane, I mean, not Sam. Sam's still a flippin' boy scout. Kane went off and did the tortured thing because he went and killed some bloke that should've been dead to begin with. Fucking do-gooders stuffing it all up by turning him over to the authorities." Her voice was in a singsong by the end of the sentence but sounded very unimpressed with the decision. "Some people just deserve to be put out of everyone else's misery."

Some guy behind her yelled "Fuck the English!" and she echoed his words before stopping and swaying in place where she stood. "Think I left Aoife in my duffle, actually. 'Sides, the clothes would never fit. We were out and," her hand flailed in an incoherent gestured and she started to teeter off down the sidewalk again, "I left her at home and we didn't go back before coming here. Or I'd've changed." Vanessa frowned and tugged at her white hair. "Shoulda looked like her anyway. Stupid blue. Miss my freckles."

"Aww." Adrienne returned to Vanessa's side to help her along. "You do look adorable in freckles, Vee. But you're stunning in blue." She smiled at her friend's comment about Apocalypse. "I agree, emphatically. Some people do deserve to be put down. 'Sides," she mimicked Ness's tone with a smirk, "he never was a Boy Scout, apparently, or so he told me in Florida. I should find a new name for him. Are you taking me to see some sights, at least, or are we just walking aimlessly until you sober up?"

"I'll take adorable over stunning. Less leering that way." She wrinkled her nose and leaned against Adrienne again, though less heavily this time, and pulled her leather jacket in tighter. "The Corrupt Canadian Wonder?" Vanessa started giggling at what she thought was a very amusing name for Garrison. Still giggling she nodded and pointed off down the left of a street they were approaching. "Aye, the butcher shop me da worked at is down there. The baseball diamond if it's still there. Never played baseball. Always stickball. Don't think anyone had a bat 'cept the bloke who used 'em on kneecaps. C'mon, you get the tour o' Ness!" She veered to the left, tugging Adrienne along so they could go down the street she'd pointed at a moment ago.

Feeling her neck wrench as Vanessa veered off suddenly, Adrienne grunted in dissatisfaction. "It's not really a nickname if it takes more time to say than his regular name, is it?" she questioned of the Corrupt Canadian Wonder. Besides, she didn't think it was a good idea to pick at Garrison's scar over the 'corrupt' issue, though she wasn't about to say that out loud. "And are you saying that I'm leering at you by calling you stunning?" she asked, trying to keep the fact that she felt a little hurt out of her voice. She'd always thought their innocent flirting was mutually enjoyable. But now the blue woman was drunk, and likely to be more honest. Another reason Adrienne hated being the only semi-sober one in the conversation.

"Huh?" Ness stopped and gave Adrienne a quizzical look. Drunken lack of comprehension was written all over her face until it lit up with the dawning of understanding. "Ooooh! No. Not you." She laughed and bumped Adrienne with her hip before dragging her off again, weaving down the sidewalk as she was. "You I could do with a bit more leering from." She winked and giggled, knowing that the wink came off incredibly cheesy for once. "It's the blokes, with the eyes and the eye rape and shite. Sodding gits, the lot of 'em! Can't stand them. I'm not a bleeding car and they are not seeing my flippin' engine block!"

It took every ounce of self-restraint Adrienne still possessed to keep her from planting a kiss on Vanessa's temple at the rant about blokes and engines. The woman really was adorable, freckles or not. Usually adorable did absolutely nothing for Adrienne, but maybe the adorable coupled with the drunkenness combined to a formula that she liked very much. Or maybe it was just the woman in general that she liked. This whole friendship thing was still strange to her; she couldn't really define it at all. "They think you're a Ferrari," Adrienne giggled in return. "Or maybe a Hummer. Men are bastards." She didn't like how dark the street was, or how much they were weaving, but trusted that Vanessa knew where they were going and wasn't too drunk to defend them if the man she'd mentioned who owned the baseball bat crossed their path.

Vanessa scoffed and a snort followed soon after. "Like they'd know what to do with a real flippin' Hummer if they ever got their hands on one. They just know those big, unnecessary sodding things that make up for them having small bleedin' cocks." She rolled her eyes and waved a hand dismissively. "They've surgery for that these days. Or pumps. Supposedly you can get long term effects but you've probably to end up with a permanent hard on, too." She giggled to herself.

A few of the street lights were out but it wasn't anything to concern Ness. In her drunken state she thought the place was rather well-lit. Halfway down the block she stopped abruptly and leaned against a pane of glass. The storefront was empty but the deli counter was visible through the window. Her forehead rested on the cold glass and she just stared inside, breath fogging up her view. "Aye, seems like the window shouldn't be here if the rest of it isn't. That's where they found 'im," she told Adrienne, pointing to the back corner. "That's where my da bled to death because of those fucking mafioso wannabes who wanted to start shite with the blokes in the neighborhood. Fucking guineas!" She actually spit on the sidewalk then, as if spitting on the people she spoke of.

"Hey!" Adrienne hissed, startled. She gave Vanessa's arm a shake. "Don't say shit like that!" It was silly to think that by calling people names it could invoke them to materialize, but it was late, it was dark, it was a holiday for hooligans, they were both inebriated, and Adrienne didn't know the neighbourhood at all. The self-preservationist in her was a tiny bit freaked out right now. "I'm sorry about your da," she crooned affectionately, nuzzling Vanessa's neck, hoping that her sentimentality would soften some of Vanessa's anger. "I know how much you loved him. How about we walk to the cemetary, you show me where he is and you can shout all you want there, alright?"

She was shaking her head. In fact Vanessa had been shaking it for about a minute before she spoke a single word. "No." She pulled an unnecessary bobby pin out of her hair, which was held in place by a hair elastic, and wandered over to the door. "I don't go to the cemetery. I saw them put him in the ground, I know he's there. But he's not him anymore. Just bones. Dust. Maybe some skin still? Aye, but I dunno how decayed he'd be. The formal--" she stumbled over the word, "for-mal-da-hide stops that, huh?" Vanessa crouched down and began an attempt to pick the lock of the abandoned butcher shop.

"Shit." But at least being inside the shop seemed safer than being in the middle of the street. "Five minutes, then we're gonna keep walking," Adrienne said in her most parental tone. "Cemetaries creep the hell out of me anyway. Especially now that I know I read dead people." It was a childish fear, that she would somehow stumble over a dead body and read it, but Adrienne couldn't help it. While Vanessa worked on getting the door open, Adrienne wiped a hand off with a wetnap from her purse and read the door, checking to see if there was an alarm system on the other side. It seemed there was- the realtor attempting to sell the place had installed one as insurance for the property. When the door swung open, Adrienne surged forward to read the alarm panel and deactivated it.

It had taken some time for Vanessa to pick the lock. She wasn't an expert at it but she was more than just decent at picking locks in general. But that was when she was sober. Adrienne was actually through the door before Vanessa had even realized she'd gotten it open. Leaning against the door's frame, she squinted at the quick motions of her friend's hand. It took nearly a half minute to register what Adrienne had done. "Mmm, aren't you handy?" Vanessa went stumbling into the empty space until she found a spot behind the counter and laid down. She showed no signs of passing out but instead laid her hand very deliberately on the floor, fingers spread out and her eyes unfocused as she stared at something that wasn't there. "I miss him, cupcake. Why couldn't it've been mum who got mowed down instead?" Maybe it was a horrible thing to say, but it was how she felt nonetheless.

Adrienne had gone back to reading the door now that they'd entered- their entering had changed the probability of consequences being meted out, after all. She pushed forward on the timeline of the door, watched herself and Morgan- Vanessa, she reminded herself, though it was more difficult to imagine Vanessa picking a lock and breaking into a shop- looking around the room, giving a start at a noise outside, scampering away quickly. The realtor coming in several days later with a perspective buyer, noticing the alarm had been left unarmed, scouring the place, finding fingerprints in the dust on the counter, calling the cops...

With a growl, Adrienne disengaged from the door, then touched it again a second later, going into the future again. This time after they scampered away the unlocked shop door and unarmed alarm had been noticed by the 'guineas' as Vanessa had called them. They'd trashed what little was in the place and had decorated it in various different ways, none of which were to Adrienne's liking...
The third time she touched it, Adrienne saw herself giving a start at the noise, but remaining inside to wipe at the fingerprints with a wetnap, rearm the alarm as she shooed Morgan out. But her hesitation had given a couple of men- mere shadows in her psychometric vision- time to approach the shop, intercept her.

Cursing the uncertain precognition, Adrienne stepped away from the door. It could be possible that none of the things she'd seen would happen. But she couldn't be certain. Instead of being paralysed by her fear, she forced herself forward, kneeling down beside Vanessa. "I don't know, Vee," she said with sympathy for her friend, pulling a wetnap from her handbag and beginning to wipe the spot on the floor where Vanessa was touching. "Because you can't count on other people to give you what you want?" She pulled a pair of brand new leather gloves, the kind she used to wear before she'd discovered Forge's hand-coating substance, out of her handbag and gently lifted one of Vanessa's hands, fitting a glove over it. "Put these on if you're gonna touch things, okay?" It didn't fit properly,since her hands were smaller than Vanessa's, but it covered her fingertips at least. "Why do we always break in places when we come to Boston?" she asked, and a giggle escaped her.

Vanessa's nose wrinkled at Adrienne wiping down the floor as if the ex-mercenary would catch undesirable germs from it. Her look turned to annoyance as the too small glove was put on her. It was uncomfortable but for now she left it there in its pathetic attempt to fit on her hand. "Because when a person goes home they tend to be more truthful about who they are, probably. Not fucking Suzie Homemaker here, cupcake." She sat up and a steely look came into her eyes as they narrowed at the glass window. She imagined it shattering and the bullets whizzing in to bury themselves in her dad. "That's where I grew up. There and wars. I only behave in the mansion because the kids don't deserve the consequences if they follow me home." The fact that she didn't bother when she was with Adrienne suggested she believed the woman could take care of herself if the consequences went back to her.

Vanessa stood up, this time more steady on her feet. "I don't want to stay here anymore. Aye, I've a feeling you'll like the rundown baseball diamond more anyway." She wasn't too concerned about leaving prints. Sure, Vanessa Calysle was on the books at Snow Valley and the Boston PD had that business of her being assumed dead cleared up for them when that had hapened, but they couldn't prove she picked the lock or turned off the alarm. Entering wasn't much to book someone on when the place was already empty. The glove was pulled off and she handed it back to Adrienne, obviously more sober than she'd been when they entered but clearly not entirely without her inebriation.

"You are so spastic," Adrienne commented about Vanessa's odd speech about wars and being followed home and the sudden urge to leave. She rolled her eyes. "Give me a minute. You may have nothing to fear from the police if the realtor finds your prints and decides to be a cunt and press charges, but I'm on the books and I don't want to go to jail. I'll only go lesbian for you, Sassafrass, not some no-neck prison matron named Pink Pearl." She quickly wiped down the alarm panel and reset the alarm, then followed Vanessa out. It wasn't until she had relocked and closed the door and they were out of sight of the shop that Adrienne let out a sigh of relief. None of the possible futures she'd seen when reading the door had come true. "I hate precognition," she muttered under her breath as she caught up to Vanessa and slipped an arm around the blue woman's waist.

"I am not being spastic," Vanessa proclaimed with finality before she'd headed out the door. When Adrienne caught up to her a leather-covered arm slung over the shorter woman's shoulder but Vanessa no longer leaned on her despite still being unable to walk a straight line. She felt more sober, even if she really wasn't. "Well, Cayenne, if Pink Pearl starts coming for you I'll have a shiv ready to amputate bits of her she'll miss. Like her nipples. I'd imagine most women would miss having those and it lends none of the bad ass bitch cred that getting your face cut up would give you." She shrugged and continued on down the street leisurely. "What's with the mumbling about ignition?" After a thoughtful pause she added, "Mate, I really miss stealing cars. Too bad all the ones in this neighborhood're rubbish. Fucking Southies. Can't they go in for a more profitable type of crime than whatever they're up to these days?"

After listening to Vanessa talk about amputating nipples, Adrienne nodded emphatically. "You are a complete spastic. But if what you're saying is that you would go to prison with me and use shivs to defend my prison virginity, then I love your spastic ways. Too bad there aren't any cars worth stealing; then we could really try to get arrested." Her eyes rolled again and she poked Vanessa in the side as she said it. "I said I hate pre-cog-nition. Trying to guess the future based on probability of possible events, or some such rubbish, as the Brits would say. Like, if I read this car, and I look in its future and the vision says we're going to steal it, well, is that really going to happen? Or is it just one of a million possibilities that might happen to that car?"

"That's right." Vanessa's tone was all that special type of false bravado only hear when there was too much alcohol interacting with the brain circuitry. "No one takes my woman's prison cherry but me! Gotta defend your honour so I can take it later." White eyebrows waggled and Vanessa managed a close approximation to a sultry purr. Her hip bumped Adrienne's and then her fingers started to twirl brown locks of hair around themselves as the pair walked. "Maybe you shouldn't try readin' futures and make your own instead."

"Alright," Adrienne laughed, "now you're spastic and cheesy." But she kissed a blue temple to show she appreciated the sentiment. "I just can't decide if cheesy is better coming from Daniel or from Vee."

"Fuck you, it's charming and endearing, not cheesy!" Vanessa gave Adrienne a wide grin and then kissed her cheek with the smacking sound and everything. "Onward, ho!" She pointed right ahead of herself and began to March off in an exaggerated fashion.