Logs: Jake, Garrison, Morgan, Adrienne - early thursday morning

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Jake has an embarrassing accident during an intimate moment with Adrienne.
((Disclaimer- first paragraph maybe not the best thing to read with a boss over your shoulder. Nothing gratuitous, just... yeah, to be on the safe side...))

He was moving, she was moving under him, they were moving and behind his eyes the pressure was building. He was starting to see stars and they were reflected in the light flashing in Adrienne's eyes as they opened and she looked at him hungrily and he bent down to catch her mouth with his own, devouring her in a kiss, and everything was building and building and he pushed himself back up, bracing himself on his arms, trying to hold off. Trying to hold on, and the pressure was building, and everything was building, and Adrienne moving below him, moaning below him, throwing her head back and tensing and building and he was right on the edge -- and then he was falling, and falling, and falling, collapsing, pitching to his left as he fell, burying his face in Adrienne's shoulder and crying out as the force of his orgasm hit him like a brick to the back of the skull.

Adrienne had been nearing her own climax when there was suddenly a lot more weight on her than there should have been, and a thread of coherent thought broke through her mounting pleasure. The only reason she'd let him be on top was because Jake had promised not to trap her, since she had no intention of feeling like he was holding her or forcing her. So what was this, then? Raising her head a little to get a better look, Adrienne's eyes widened in apparent horror and she let out a shriek.

The sound ripped through the post-climactic haze in his brain like a knife. Jake's head snapped up and he tried to push himself up and off of Adrienne, managing instead to again fall on top of her in his panic. His left arm wasn't working--no, his left arm wasn't there and now Adrienne was pushing him off as she panicked herself, pulling away from him, and the next thing he knew his right arm was flailing at empty space as he fell off of the bed. His head smacked into the floor as he landed, and suddenly he was seeing a different set of stars.

"I- sorry..." she said with genuine sincerity, jumping off the bed both to make sure that Jake was alright and to head towards the door. Adrienne grabbed her blouse and skirt and shoved the rest of her things into her handbag. She was still a little sticky from the chocolate they'd been... indulging in earlier, as there was a little that Jake hadn't managed to lick off, but right now her need to get dressed and get away trumped any mess that her clothes might face. As she tugged her skirt on, one part of her brain tried to reason with the other part, reminding her that everything was fine and that Jake would be upset if she left- he was sensitive about missing his arm, after all- but whenever she blinked she was seeing images from Garrison's car, of Garrison's arm being ripped off and those images were haunting her time with Jake. Seeing him without his arm brought back the nightmares of what had happened to Kane and Adrienne needed to get away from it all. She wasn't strong enough to look at Jake right now and be able to see past what had happened to Garrison. "Are you alright?" she asked as she pulled her blouse on. "I have to go- I'm sorry."

Jake sat up slowly, still dazed and trying to figure out exactly how he'd ended up on the floor. And Adrienne--he looked up to find her dressed and rooting around on the floor for her shoes. "What--what are you doing?" he asked, blinking up at her, confusion evident in his voice.

"I'm sorry, Jake," she answered, slipping on her shoes and trying to button her blouse. There was a pained look on her face, and she had to struggle to keep her voice from catching in her throat. "Your arm- I can't- I saw someone's arm torn off their body, and it's just... I'm sorry. Right now I can't get that out of my head, I can't..." I can't deal with this. 'Try to have sex with a guy after eight fucking years of being a nun and his fucking arm comes off? I can't deal with this. "Look, I'll call you when I calm down, but right now I need to go." Watch baseball, curl up on Morgan's couch in a ball, go to the gym and beat the shit out of something...

She was kidding. She had to be kidding. Except that she wasn't laughing; instead she was clearly about to lose it. Jake blinked again, rubbing the back of his head with his only available hand. You have got to be fucking kidding me, he thought as what she was saying finally sank in. Of all the girls, he'd picked the one with the serious arm amputation issues. It might have been funny had he not been sitting on the floor watching her walk out. "Adrienne..." he started, but what was he supposed to say, exactly? He had the feeling that 'Don't worry, it'll grow back' was going to be small comfort right now.

Tears were stinging her eyes as he said her name and Adrienne swiped them away angrily. Why was she reacting like this? Why was she being so affected by what had happened? Why the hell couldn't she just be normal about this? Why couldn't she just stay with him until her distress passed? That was what a good person would do. They would stay so he wasn't upset about something that wasn't even his fault.

Was it really the fact that he'd lost his arm during sex, or the fact that she couldn't get Garrison out of her head because Jake had lost his arm during sex that was distressing her?
"I'm so sorry, Jake. I'll call you," she promised, opening the door. She knew that she had probably fucked things up with him irrevocably but was unable to make herself stay. She could only hope he'd never gotten his hopes up too high that she was a good person. That way she wouldn't be disappointing him too badly now. Maybe she was only disappointing herself. As she closed the door behind her, she glanced back one last time to see Jake where she'd left him, sitting on the floor with a lost look on his face and a smear of chocolate just above his collarbone.

Garrison and Adrienne run into each other in the hallway as Adrienne is fleeing Jake.

She'd done up the middle two buttons of her shirt but hadn't bothered with the rest. Her skirt and shoes were on, and her handbag was over her shoulder, so aside from the shirt and the bits of chocolate clinging to her, Adrienne thought she looked halfway decent, which was fine by her at this point since she only had to make it down the hallway, down the stairs and to the car, which she'd instructed Driver to leave for her so that she could drive herself back at her convenience without making him wait. But, as her luck dictated, a door opened ahead of Adrienne and she knew she was too far from Jake's door to turn back now, so she carried on as if her appearance was normal, trying to be smooth through her distress. She kept her eyes straight ahead and tried not to focus on who was emerging from the apartment- whose place was it, anyway? Jubilee's?- but when Adrienne saw Garrison out of the corner of her eye she froze in panic.

Awkward was the first word that popped to mind as Kane stepped into the corridor. He'd left Wanda asleep, and was planning to make his way back to the mansion when Adrienne had just appeared. He knew vaguely that she and Jake were dating, so it shouldn't have surprised him, but with her normally impeccable attire rumpled and tossed on, she didn't look like a woman finishing off a night off. In fact, she looked like she was running away from something.

"Uh, hey." He said lamely, realizing that no one would have known or expected his own drinks with Wanda that night to have turned into sex. "Kinda late, eh?"

The one thing that Adrienne considered could be worse than fleeing a man's bed because he'd lost his arm during sex would be to run into the man that made you so upset about the lost arm coming out of a woman's apartment in the wee hours of the morning right after you fled from the first man's bed. And seeing the man that made you upset looking rather... limber. And sounding very awkward. And seeing you looking like some college girl who'd been on a bender and was leaving a frat house after servicing the football team. Or something.

She managed to have a thought somewhere along the lines of 'what the fuck have I done to you lately, karma?' before the entire situation sunk in and replaced coherency with more blind panic. Looking hunted, she tried to turn and flee in the other direction, but as she did she recognized that there was no way out that way. She spun back hurriedly, realizing she had to get past him. Ordering her brain to babble something about it being kinda early rather than kinda late, but unable to hear her own voice through the roaring in her ears so not sure if she'd made any sense, Adrienne tried to stagger past him.

"Alright. Uh, Adrienne?" Garrison said as she muttered and tried to sneak past him. She looked disheveled, but it was hard to imagine that anyone on Pete's employ would try and push something too fast with her, not with Morgan on the same floor. "Hey, stop. Are you okay?" Kane said, catching up to her. "Did something happen?"

His tone dampened the blind panic she was feeling slightly. Did something happen? How the hell am I supposed to answer that? When I had sex with Jake he lost his arm and I can't stop seeing your arm getting ripped off in my head? Yeah, that's just great. "I'm perfectly alright. It's all your fault." She started moving again before she even realized she had blurted it out.

"Wait, what? What did I do?" Kane said, stunned by the bitterness in her voice. Was she angry that he'd slept with Wanda for some reason? How would she even know? Garrison was both perplexed and worried. Adrienne looked like she was fleeing something, and Kane didn't think it would be appropriate to ask Jake for details.

"You fucked with my head," Adrienne hissed, more frustrated than pained now. "You and your arm. It's my own damn fault." I never should have agreed to touch that fucking car. This is what you get for trying to help people.

"This conversation apparently went to crazy when I blinked. What are you talking about, Adrienne? What does my arm have to do with anything?" Kane was surprised and a bit hurt. She had just unloaded on him while he was trying to help, and now it was his fault?

"Your arm has to do with this," she snapped, voice escalating a little as she gestured to herself, barely managing, as she realized how embarrassing it would be, to keep herself from blurting out exactly what had happened. She recognized that she wasn't exactly being coherent, but these circumstances of their meeting had shaken her up. "And what the hell are you doing here, anyway?" Why was he at the Brownstone at this hour, other than to make her wish Steven had killed her years ago so she wouldn't have to be here now?

"I, uh-" This was silly. Why should he have any reason to feel awkward. "I met up with some of the Snow Valley people for drinks after work, and ended up staying out late with Wanda." He didn't need to elaborate any further. Kane wasn't a kiss and tell kind of guy.

"Fine. Whatever. You don't have to explain yourself to me," Adrienne snapped again, forgetting through the anger creeping in that she'd basically asked him to explain himself. Normally she would delight in hearing his awkward false start, but not now. Now it was just vaguely irritating. Why the hell should he be embarrassed about it? Why the hell should she care if he'd fucked Wanda? It wasn't as if that bothered her. Not at all. The only thing bothering her was the fact that he was the reason she'd gotten upset when she'd been trying to have sex with Jake.

"No, but apparently something that has you running out of here with your clothes obviously just thrown on over your head is all my fault." Kane said, starting to get unhappy about the whole situation. He hadn't done anything to deserve being yelled at. He thought that he and Adrienne were close, but she had always been firm that she was uninterested in other people, then suddenly changed her mind for this Jake character, and now he was the bad guy?

Adrienne threw up her hands in defeat, unaware that it had caused her to flash Kane a little since she only had two buttons done up on her shirt. "Alright, fine. It's not all your fault. It's Sabretooth's fault, and his pals. And my damned powers, not letting me get the images out of my head. Wanda, seriously? Wanda's your type?" The change in topic had caught her common sense off guard, and she wished she had something to poke her brain with, like a q-tip or an ice pick, but Adrienne tried not to let her own surprise show on her face.

"Wanda is my friend, and bites the heads off her mates to lay eggs in their husks." Kane said, now thoroughly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Yes, he'd slept with Wanda, a person whom he really trusted, and now had a panel waiting for him in the hallway. "I don't get how you fucking Jake comes into Sabretooth and your powers."

"I didn't mean it like that," Adrienne snapped grouchily. "I like Wanda." The woman had class. Adrienne wasn't going to insult Garrison by saying that she didn't think he liked classy women, but she hadn't thought Wanda was Garrison's type. "I meant because she likes fashion and shopping and..." she realized she should just stop before she insulted both Wanda and Garrison. It wasn't that she thought Wanda was too high class or high maintenance for Garrison, or that she thought Kane didn't like women who liked shopping... So then what is it? she tried to ask herself, but didn't have anything that could be qualified as an answer. "And you don't have to get it," she continued, face darkening as she mumbled miserably at him. "If I want to run out on Jake because he lost his arm during sex and it reminded me of you losing your arm, then that's what I'm going to do and I don't care if you don't get it." Shit. She would never live it down. Possibly Jake would never live it down if Garrison started telling people. Adrienne felt like sobbing, but she held back by biting her lip and attempting to pass Kane again.

"You what?" Kane said, openmouthed and astonished. He was completely caught off guard by the entire situation. He hadn't realized that she and Jake were that far involved already, and now she was taking off because of a tramuatic flashback to his near death and it was all his fault? He let her past, a little hurt but also just stunned.

Adrienne turned back to answer. "You heard me," she mumbled. She knew she should just walk away, but a part of her- the insane part, probably- wanted to hear his response to what she'd told him.

"That just- you know what, you do what you want." Kane said, already feeling put on the spot, and now getting the blame for her own issues with her boytoy. He was a little surprised how, well, guilty he felt about being caught out by Adrienne, and now being her excuse for getting out of a situation with Jake was making him angry. "I'm not anyone's excuse." He said, a touch nastily as he turned and walked off the other way.

"I'm not using you as an excuse," she snapped back. "Do you think I wanted this to happen? It's been eight fucking years, for Chrissakes; I didn't rush into this lightly, like some horny teenager," she added, a little accusingly, "I don't do things I'm unsure about." Well, usually. "I wasn't looking for an excuse." She'd been ready to sleep with Jake, had been talking herself into it since he'd first asked her out. Did Garrison really think she wanted this to happen?

"Then why the fuck are you running away and blaming me for it, Adrienne. You--" Kane cut himself off. This situation had started uncomfortable, and now was twisting ugly. "Just do whatever you need to; run away, go back and top him off. I don't care." The last statement was a lie, but there wasn't anything that he could say that wouldn't make this even worse. Throwing up his hands, Kane left in the opposite direction, deliberately taking the long way around from her, and let her complete her escape.

"I'm blaming you because it is your fault!" she yelled after him, exasperated. "Just because I didn't want it to happen doesn't mean you didn't cause it!" She knew she was being ridiculous, but the entire situation was ridiculous, and she was beginning to feel embarrassed about leaving Jake in the first place, which was making her especially defensive. Garrison was obviously not worth thinking about at all. He was screwing Wanda. She shouldn't care about whether he thought she was blaming him. She shouldn't be wondering about how to apologize to him.

Huffing out an annoyed breath, Adrienne turned back towards the apartment doors, feeling like she should go apologize to Jake, or go to Morgan's since she was sure the blue woman had heard the confrontation. Morgan was a light sleeper, an early riser, and they'd been close to her door when they'd been having their conversation. But Adrienne wasn't ready to face Jake yet, and was certain that after Morgan showed her the sympathy Adrienne desired, she'd be in for a lecture. And she really wasn't in the mood to be told how idiotic she was being. Doing up the remaining buttons on her shirt, Adrienne turned back towards the stairwell and headed down to her car so she could go hide in her room with her fish.

Morgan gives Adrienne a pep talk about apologizing to Jake and things get worse before they get better.

Morgan had waited until the heavier footsteps that she was sure belonged to Garrison had wandered off into whatever direction they were going to go before she opened the door to her apartment and peered out into the hallway. Fucking people and their loud fucking arguments. It wasn't like the walls were sound proofed and some people were light fucking sleepers. Couldn't they yell at each other somewhere else?

Her annoyance over being woken by Garrison and Adrienne's row, however, did not overshadow the fact that she was a bit worried about her friend. Morgan went to the north side of the floor where the common area was, opened a window and threw a book at Adrienne below. She didn't even know what book it was, it was just the heaviest thing she'd laid her hand on that wasn't breakable. "Oi! Woman! Get your ass back in here." She didn't care much about the hour or how loudly she yelled outside. They were New Yorkers, they could fucking deal.

Adrienne had been trying to work the key into the car door with shaking hands when the book hit the ground a few feet from her. She turned to see Morgan in one of the windows and her eyes welled up at the prospect of sympathy even as her hands began to shake even worse at the prospect of a lecture. She wanted to escape, to run and hide in her suite, but realized that the last time something like this had happened she'd fucked things up badly between herself and Morgan, and because she never wanted that happening again Adrienne turned and walked towards the book. "If this is the fucking Kama Sutra I'm going to strangle you," she called up to Morgan as she bent down to retrieve it, voice catching in her throat. Shakily, Adrienne returned to the building and mounted the stairs, each step more laboured due to a sense of foreboding that was settling in the pit of her stomach.

For all Morgan knew it was a fucking Bible. How nice would that have been, throw a Bible at your mate after having a row with another mate about her sexual misfire? She shut the window, careful to not let it slam and locked it before trotting down to meet Adrienne halfway down the stairs. "Cupcake, you look like shite, you know that right?" And she did. Her friend looked like she was about to burst into tears at any moment on top of having that disheveled, post-sex look. And her clothes were clinging to her in odd ways which Morgan was putting down to sweat. "Aye, c'mon, you should get clean. It'll make you feel better, yeah? Drive back to Westchester'll be a bitch and you'll be all sweaty and sticky and unhappy and then go plowing into a tree or summat and then who'll I terrorize?" An arm was draped loosely around Adrienne's shoulders and she led her mess of a friend back up the stairs and to her own apartment.

She flinched when Morgan put her arm around her shoulders, but after a moment Adrienne found herself leaning into the blue woman's weight and allowing herself to be led to Morgan's place. She wouldn't put plowing into a tree out of the equation right now, judging by the fact that her hands had been shaking too badly to unlock the damn car door. "Shower would be great, thanks," she mumbled quietly, struggling to keep the hitch out of her voice. She couldn't bring herself to ask Morgan how much she'd heard, or what she should do. Not yet. With a weary sigh she let Morgan lead her into the bathroom, where she turned on the water in the shower and stripped her disheveled clothes off clinically, not really thinking about what she was doing, focusing instead on finding an answer to the impossible questions of what she was going to do about Jake and about Kane, and if she even wanted to do anything about them.

"I'll find you some PJ pants and a tee shirt or summat, yeah? Relax for a bit. And try not to collapse and crack your skull open. I don't fancy telling people you bit it in my tub." That would just be a bit embarrassing, really. Morgan went off, leaving the door cracked open a little so she could hear if Adrienne called for anything. She took note of the smears of brown and sticky on Adrienne before she'd left the woman to herself. Chocolate sauce? Well, that was typical but she supposed on the slightly kinky side for the vanilla variety. She busied herself with trying to find something that would fit Adrienne and had to settle for a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, both of which would be too big for her but it was the closest Morgan would get to her size. The clothing was left folded up on the sink and afterward the metamorph set about making tea, because it was supposed to be soothing, right?

Emerging from the bathroom some time later in the clothes Morgan had left, Adrienne padded quietly into the kitchen and nodded at the white-haired woman. Washing off the remnants of what she'd done with Jake, along with the time to think had done much to steady her nerves, though she still hadn't come to any conclusions about what she was going to do. "Thank you," she said gratefully. "I needed that." She leaned against Morgan's counter. "So? Let's hear it," she muttered, sounding like she was about to be tried and executed.

"Hear what?" Morgan poured some tea into a mug and slid it over to Adrienne. "Sugar's in the cupboard behind you. Honey, too." Morgan took her own tea with a bit of milk but no sweetener. "You shagged Jake, or tried to, his arm disappeared, you freaked out and ran off then had a row with Garrison. I'm not entirely sure why you two decided to have a fight in the middle of the bloody Brownstone at this hour and I imagine a fair few of the others, at least on this floor, likely woke and heard it as well." Morgan wasn't sure but she imagined a number of people in X-Force were light sleepers, and likely for the same reasons she was. Perhaps all those people were on the third floor, though. She wondered how much sound carried between the floors. "Didn't figure you for the sex without love and commitment, honestly, but it's your choice to make and he seems like a decent enough bloke."

If I wanted love and committment, I'd- Adrienne nearly opened her mouth to say it, but she couldn't even finish the thought let alone voice it. She sipped her tea black. "I did make the choice," she said when the urge to voice what she'd been thinking and thoroughly stir her life up further had passed. "I decided to have sex with him because I like Jake," she mumbled, remembering their conversation while ghost-hunting, in which Morgan had pointed out that having sex with someone you liked was a win-win situation becaue it wasn't meaningless. "I don't know why you thought I needed love and committment," she added in a mumble, feeling very sorry for herself. "I thought we already established that people who waited to be in love ended up losing out?" They'd discussed the fact that she wasn't in love with him but that since people who waited until they were in love before sex got fucked over anyway, there was no point in denying herself sex. "I decided I didn't want to lose out anymore. And look where that got me. He lost his arm and I couldn't get what I saw happen to Garrison's arm out of my head. And then, to make things even more fun for me, Garrison shows up as I'm running away from Jake!" She leaned her head back against a cupboard and made a face. "It's karma. It has to be. How the fuck do I compete with that?"

"Sex with someone you like is win-win, yeah, I just hadn't figured on it being enough for you. High standards and all that." Morgan shrugged, brushing it off. She wasn't going to make a big deal out of this, because if she did things would get worse. More complicated. More drama. She didn't want that. In fact she wanted everything to just be normal. The trouble was Morgan wasn't sure what standard she was using for her normality these days. She sipped her tea, something that conveniently kept her from speaking. Maybe she should keep a beverage on hand all the time, just to stop herself from saying stuff she shouldn't when impulse tried to push the words out of her mouth anyway.

"Trauma is trauma, cupcake. It's just one of those things that you need to figure out how to deal with. It was pretty fucked up of you to run out on him, though. I mean, it's not like he can't make the arm come back. Maybe if you stuck around for that, or maybe if you stuck around long enough to see it was just gone rather than being a bloody mass of torn muscle and bone you wouldn't have kept freaking out. You should have stopped and focused on Jake, not on the fucking Mountie who got his arm back and your memories of having to see him lose it. I'm not saying it doesn't suck that you saw that, but your focus went in the wrong direction and it didn't help you deal. And if you liked him enough to sleep with him I'd've thought you'd like him enough to try to stick around because he kinda freaks out about the whole lost arm thing from my experience. Course, that could have just been the context of our conversation, but he still freaked out and I can't believe he'd take it well that he slipped up his concentration, lost his arm and lost the girl because of it."

Adrienne shrugged at Morgan's point about having high standards. "My standards seem to be too high to be realistic, so I have to settle on what's enough for right now." She felt like she was disappointing Morgan by saying that, though, which gave her a pain in the pit of her stomach, so she sipped at her own tea and welcomed the change in subject, even though it was the lecture she'd anticipated. "I wanted to stick around," she replied defensively. "I just... couldn't make myself do it. I know he's sensitive about his arm. I wanted to stay with him, but I..." she shook her head, feeling even more self-pitying than before. "I guess I'm too selfish." She'd always been selfish, though. It didn't surprise her. "My focus was on me. That's where it's always been. I wasn't strong enough to stay with him and watch his arm grow back. And I don't know why I was thinking about the Mountie. I shouldn't have been stupid enough to waste a thought on him," she spat out, bitterly, wanting to blame Garrison for what had happened because it made things so much easier than admitting that everything was her fault, even though she knew it was.

"No, you shouldn't have, not when you had some other bloke inside you." The words sounded strangely without judgement even though the look in her eyes was enough to say there was a judgement there, even if it wasn't obvious exactly what that judgement was. "It was more than just selfish, cupcake, it was fucked up and rude and bitchy. You were like every guy that makes girls cry because they've been broken up with after losing their virginity or saying no to sex. I realise that's not the situation but it's just as bad. You should go see how he is. I'm not going to make you but it's the decent thing to do." Morgan made a mental note to splurge on a box of pastries and leave them on Jake's desk.

"I..." The brunette's mind went completely blank. Everything after 'it's just as bad' became white noise. She sat frozen on the counter, hearing nothing except the pounding of her heart in her ears. At some point, her hands started shaking again and tea spilled into her lap, which had the neurons firing again with a jolt. Adrienne jumped to her feet in reaction to the tea and the cup smashed on the floor. "Take it back, Morgan," she found herself spitting. It was her only conscious thought, other than recognizing that there was a buzzing in her head and that bile had risen up in her throat and she felt like she was going to throw up. "It wasn't like that. I never did that. I didn't fucking rape him. I'm not 'every guy.' I'm not that person. I'm not. Take it back," she repeated, ending on a sob, which infuriated her.
Morgan remained calm, bending to gather up the bits of the broken mug carefully. "No, I won't take it back because I didn't say you raped him. Nowhere did I compare you to a rapist. I compared you to the sort of person who gets someone in bed and ditches them after you've gotten what you want or ditches them if they aren't going to give it to you. That's not a rapist, it's a prick. Which you were and I'm not changing my stance on that. You hit the guy's sensitive button and fucking split, cupcake. That's all there is to it." Morgan threw out the larger pieces of the mug and started to sop up the hot tea with paper towels, sweeping up the smaller bits of ceramic in the process.

Adrienne sank down onto the kitchen floor, wrapping herself into a sort of foetal position with her knees drawn to her chest, her forehead on her knees and her arms around her face. She couldn't see anything beyond bright lights behind her eyes, so she sat until they faded, until the nausea dissipated in her throat. "I am a prick," she mumbled into her arms. "I always have been. I told you. I'm selfish. But you're wrong. I didn't hit his button. It's not my fault. And I didn't split because I'd gotten what I wanted, or because I thought he wasn't going to give it to me." She'd freaked. "I didn't leave him intentionally. I just..." Panicked. Because of Garrison.

"You just left. Maybe not intentionally but you left. You split because something happened and it hit one of your buttons but it's a bigger button for him. So, yeah, you're a prick. I know why you split wasn't because you'd gotten or not gotten what you wanted, it was a nonliteral comparison. More a comparison of emotional consequences than actions or motivations." Morgan's voice was mostly soft though there was an edge to it that indicated she wasn't going to pussyfoot around this one for her friend. She did, however, sit down on the floor next to Adrienne once the mess was sopped up. She did not put an arm around her, just sat close by and if Adrienne wanted contact Morgan was sure she would cause it.

"You really think I can handle your nonliteral comparisons even on a good day?" Adrienne asked wearily. It was a hypothetical question, really. She kept her head down, though she knew Morgan was close and was grateful for it. "I feel bad about leaving. Maybe I didn't stay and that was wrong, but I've never felt bad about leaving before, intentional or not," she admitted. "This is all so new and uncomfortable for me. I sort of hate it." She was whining now, which seemed to imply that she was feeling a little better. "I'm sorry about your cup. So I should go talk to Gavin?"

Morgan smirked at the whining and nudged Adrienne's shoulder with her own. "The woes of having a soul. Bit rotten, innit? Life is easier without one. I'm just not right sure it's worth having much." She shrugged. "S'all good about the mug. It was depressed for ages anyway. It's better this way. It's in a happier place." There were little cartoon images in Morgan's head of coffee mugs with wings and halos fluttering about in the clouds. Of course they also had googly eyes in her mental image and that almost made her snicker but that'd be kind of inappropriate so she held it back. "Aye, you should go talk to him. You can crash here afterward, but it'd be a good idea. Now that you're past the initial oh-my-fucking-god-panic you had going on."

"It's the Boy Scout's fault, about the panic," she whined again, raising her head to face Morgan. "Your fault about the soul, I think." And the Boy Scout's fault. And the school's fault. Adrienne nudged Morgan back, feeling a little better. "I might just head back to the mansion after; it's a school day. But I might be back if things go south and I feel like crying again," she added on a watery laugh, shaking her head ruefully. "Thanks I don't say that to you enough. Do you think mugs really go to a happier place when they get smashed?"

"Think I'd be in a happier place if people stopped filling me with scalding hot liquid," Morgan returned with a smile. She gave Adrienne a one-armed hug and then got up. Both her hands were held out to the brunette to help her up. "Well, if you don't want to drive back you can crash here, otherwise I'll text you tomorrow, drag my ass out there and take you out to Harry's or something when classes and the like are done, yeah?"

Adrienne eyed her friend suspiciously. "You're picturing them on clouds with harps, aren't you? With those boneless cartoon arms? White robes?" She leaned back into the hug gratefully, then accepted the help in standing and looked down to inspect the red splotchy welts on her thighs from the spilled tea. They throbbed a little, but Adrienne had had worse in the past, as the cigarette burn on her left thigh attested. She ignored the welts. "If I don't crash, I'd like to see you tomorrow," she agreed, gathering up her clothes and throwing them in her handbag. "Not that I'm a person who particularly needs people, but I will admit I may miss you a trifle now that you're not at the mansion any longer."

Morgan grinned unapologetically. "Yep! I totally am. I like 'em better that way. It's like my coffee is sent from heaven or summat." She leaned against the fridge for a second, then shrugged and headed toward her door. "If it's just a trifle I might have to avoid you for a bit so you miss me more. But maybe this time I'll let it be just a trifle. If you crash then I will find someone's dog to cuddle with you until you come out with me." She didn't mean it but the grin she gave Adrienne was all mischief.

"You wouldn't!" Adrienne wasn't particularly afraid of dogs, but she wasn't entirely fond of them, either. "Yes, well, everything's relative, you know. I mean, what sort of barometer do I have for missing people? The dead husband who habitually abused me? The Boy Scout who was kidnapped and thought dead for three months who just accused me of using him as an excuse to run away from Jake? You're lucky I miss you a trifle- it's more than anyone else has ever gotten." And it was true.

"And sold," Morgan declared and placed a quick, friendly peck on Adrienne's cheek. "Now get out of here and go say you're sorry to your boy toy and make up and all that rot, yeah? Otherwise there'll be lashings for you and while you might enjoy them I assure you they'll actually be punishment."

Adrienne was still shaken up enough that the mention of lashings and punishment had her faltering in her step, her arms wrapping around herself protectively and her mouth going dry with fear, but after a stumble she shook the feeling off, knowing that Morgan was only joking. "Dogs, lashings. I think I get the point. Just don't threaten me with chocolate, it's my secret weakness." She took a step back towards her friend and kissed the blue woman's cheek. "I'll talk to you later, Morgan," she said with a smile and a nod of thanks as she stepped out of the apartment.

Adrienne attempts to make things right with Jake.

Spurred on by her encounter with Morgan, Adrienne knocked on Jake's door, still dressed in the tshirt and shorts she'd borrowed from the blue woman.
"Jake?" she called out. She wasn't really worried about people overhearing-
like Morgan had said, they'd probably heard her confrontation with Kane
already. And Adrienne didn't mind if people knew that she was coming back to
attempt to apologize to Jake. "Can I come in?"

A long, hot shower had helped Jake's mood somewhat, but there had been
a spot of chocolate on the outside of his remaining elbow that he
hadn't been able to reach, and had settled for holding it under the
hot water until it had mostly melted. That hadn't helped anything, but
he wasn't in the mood to bother growing his arm back, not when he'd
hopefully be going to sleep sometime soon. Not that he felt like
sleeping. And he couldn't make Jubilee take him out for donuts,
either, now that she was trying to straighten herself out.

He was standing in front of the fridge, one armed and wearing only
pajama pants, trying to decide if he had an appetite for anything when
Adrienne knocked. That answered the appetite question, then. He
sighed, squeezing his eyes shut and resting his head briefly against
the edge of the fridge door before he closed it. It was tempting to
pretend that he wasn't here, or better yet, sneak over to Wanda's on
the fire escape, but with his luck she'd just shove him out in the
hallway and tell him to get it over with.

He took a deep breath and then opened the door, not bothering to hide
his arm. "Hey."

Adrienne noticed that the arm was still gone but she forced herself to look
at Jake's face instead of the missing appendage. Focus on Jake, she
told herself, taking Morgan's advice, not on the memories, not on
Garrison... the arm can come back... "Hey," she replied. "Can I come in
for a second?"

He stepped back wordlessly, holding the door open for her. He would
have gestured for her to come in, but, well. "Do you want something to
drink?"

Stepping inside, she shook her head. "I had tea at Morgan's." She stood in
the middle of the room, wondering how to start. Apologies were not
Adrienne's strong suit. "About before... I know it wasn't my fault, but I'm
sorry anyway. For leaving, I mean. It was... it's just..." Though explaining
her state of mind and why she'd left might have been a good idea, Adrienne
was simply too weary to go through her feelings with Jake and justify what
she'd done in a way that was more complete than what she'd told him about
Garrison's arm earlier. "It was wrong of me to leave," she said instead, in
attempt to bypass having to perform self-analysis out loud for Jake's
benefit. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." He leaned against the closed door, watching her for a
moment. "Are you?"

"I'm..." She huffed out a tired breath. "I've been told I have some trauma,
and I handled it badly." Apologizing blew. "I mean, it's not the sort of
thing one expects to have to handle, right?" She put her hands out to hold
off any protestations. "That's not the point, I know. I came back because I
wanted to make things right." She just had no idea how to actually do that.

Jake nodded. His hand was still wrapped around the doorknob, he
realized, as if to make it easier to fling himself out into the
hallway once he decided to run away. He forced himself to let go
before he did, in fact, fling himself out into the hallway. The
problem with that was that he had no idea what to do with his hand;
he'd have preferred to cross his arms, but that wasn't really an
option, and his pajamas didn't have pockets. He settled for rubbing
the back of his head. "So should I ask about the trauma, or is it
better for both of us that I not know?"

Adrienne focused on Jake's face rather than what his remaining arm was
doing. "I told you before I left," she reminded him. "I saw someone's arm
ripped off their body. Someone I'm... I was," she corrected bitterly, "sort
of close to. I saw it with my powers," she explained further, crossing her
arms over her chest, "and things I see that way don't leave my mind easily.
They're more vivid than something I see normally, and it takes longer for
them to fade. But... that's not an excuse, as I've been told. And I... I
feel badly about leaving." Adrienne barely restrained from making a face,
half-expecting her tongue to fall out at the confession. Stupid soul.

"You weren't exactly making a lot of sense when you left," Jake
pointed out without rancor. He sighed. It had been a long night, and
he was suddenly very, very tired. He pushed himself away from the door
and crossed over to flop on the couch, being careful to give Adrienne
her distance, and to sit in such a way that she wouldn't have to look
at his empty shoulder if she chose to sit down. He pulled his legs up
and wrapped his arm around his knees, managing to look much younger
than he was. "This," he shrugged his left shoulder, "just happened a
few weeks ago. I haven't figured everything out yet. If I'd thought
this might happen, I would've said something first."

"I believe you," she answered with a nod. She couldn't bring herself to sit
on the couch, but made it as far as the arm, ignoring the irony. "Does...
does it hurt to grow it back?" Adrienne hoped that learning more about
Jake's situation would help her to get over her uneasiness.

He blinked; it wasn't a question he'd been expecting. "No," he
replied. He didn't add that he could feel his missing arm being
manipulated sometimes, and that sometimes that hurt; he wasn't looking
for sympathy, and he'd probably pushed enough of Adrienne's buttons
for one day. "It's just...part of my powers."

She nearly asked why he wasn't growing it back if it didn't hurt, but held
her tongue, figuring she'd offended him enough for one day. "Am I keeping
you awake?" she asked instead, gesturing to the pyjama pants. "I can go if
you want me to." She was torn between wanting to run away and wanting to
straighten things out with him, so Adrienne decided to give Jake the choice
of what she did.

"I was still up." It was tempting to tell her to just leave; he wasn't
really sure what she wanted or needed to hear, and he certainly wasn't
enjoying the conversation. He ran his hand through his hair, then
looked at her wearily. "I don't know what your issues are." He held up
his hand to stop her protest. "Not the arm thing--I get that. But it's
like every time you get something you want, you panic. You couldn't
even kiss me the first time without freaking out and running away. And
trust me, if anyone knows running away, it's me."

He shook his head. "Look. This...has been fun, mostly. But you're kind
of driving me crazy, you know?"

Adrienne gave him a rueful smile and nodded. She was a little disappointed,
but what was happening now had been inevitable, really. "No offense, Jake,
but you don't really have any idea what it is I want," she told him gently.
"I don't even know, not when it comes to something like this." She
brightened a little. "I know I enjoy spending time with you, and I know I do
want to sleep with you, but beyond that, I have no idea, and that drives me
crazy, too."

"See, that's kind of my point." He sighed, clearly exasperated. "You
want to go out to dinner with me, but at the end of the night you
freak out and run away. You want to sleep with me, but at the end of
the night you freak out and run away. You clearly have some sort of
big hideous trauma that you can't even talk about, and yet--"

He stopped, wrapping his arm back around his legs protectively. "Why
are you here, Adrienne? Did you come back to make me feel better, or
to make yourself feel better?"

Regarding him coolly, Adrienne tried not to smirk. She'd misjudged him,
thinking that he could handle someone else's emotional baggage. Instead, it
seemed as if he wanted someone simple. Her track record for picking men to
get involved with was clearly abysmal. "Do you think this is making me feel
better?" Adrienne inquired, eyebrow raised. "Feeling better would be adding
scotch to my tea at Morgan's and drinking until I didn't have to think
anymore." Her voice was calm and casual. "I came back to see how you were,
and to apologize. So yes, to try and make you feel better. I feel as if I'm
not succeeding on that front," she pointed out.

He sighed, resting his head on his knees. "I'm sorry," he said
finally, his voice muffled by his legs. "I'm being an ass. It's been a
long night," he said ruefully, glancing up at her. He scrubbed a hand
through his hair. "I...Thanks. For coming back."

"You're welcome," Adrienne answered, "although it doesn't seem like
something you should have to thank someone for." If it was supposed to be
the right thing to do, why would it warrant thanks? "Are you really
alright?" she asked him cautiously. "I was going to head back to the mansion
for a swim, but I can stay for a while if you wanted me to." She'd been
thinking about suggesting breakfast, but it was still a little early for
anywhere good to be open.

He shook his head; the last thing he wanted was to awkwardly pretend
like nothing had happened. "I'm fine. I'm probably just going to go to
bed."

With a nod, Adrienne rose from her perch on the am of the chair. She
squeezed Jake's shoulder. "Alright." She realized that things between them,
sexually at least, were over, and she regretted that a lot more than she
thought she would, but at least they weren't fighting. This 'friend' thing
was still quite foreign to Adrienne, but she did enjoy talking to Jake and
exploring new restaurants, and hoped they could keep doing that in the
future. "If you wanted to get some breakfast or dessert sometime, let me
know."

He was oddly proud of himself for not flinching away from her touch.
He got up and walked her to the door. "Adrienne..." He tilted his head
to one side, looking at her for a moment. "I hope you figure out what
you want," he said finally.


"Thanks," she said with a nod. "Be sure to give me a call if you want to get some food." Smiling, Adrienne slipped out of the apartment and knocked on Morgan's door. When it was opened, she gave the blue woman a rueful smile. "I do believe I was just dumped. He even called me crazy, and said that I had big hideous trauma." She grinned at that. "I've never been dumped before. What does one do in this situation? Is it too early to start drinking?" Not that she intended on getting drunk. They'd barely even been in a relationship. But what she'd repeated to Morgan had stung a little, which was why she'd come back to her friend's.