Adrienne & Jean-Paul, Friday Afternoon

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Adrienne and Jean-Paul talk over pies.


Jean-Paul was eating pies made by a woman called Marie Callender. They had come out of boxes after being frozen. There was part of him that was most definitely objecting to the thought of eating them, but after taking a few bites, he'd realized they weren't bad. So he'd told that part of his brain that was (still) objecting to shove off and he'd tucked in. Key lime pie was, he decided, not Miss Callender's best. He was far fonder of her chocolate satin, but he also liked the lemon meringue.

The public kitchen might not have been the best place to have his taste-test, but it had more counter space than the kitchenette in his suite and he was relatively sure that all the students, at least, were in some kind of class.

"I believe this is the first time I've seen you out and about, Monsieur," Adrienne mused as she poked her head into the kitchen on her way past. Detouring, she stopped just inside the room. "Figured it was safe because this is a schoolday?"

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, nodding. He took another bite of the lemon meringue and considered it thoughtfully for a long moment before going for the chocolate. "I should avoid the public places though. Someone always stumbles over me." Reaching for the drawer, he opened it and pulled out a second fork, offering it to Adrienne with a quirked brow. "I have no communicable diseases. And I owe you for dinner, non?"

Adrienne dug into the chocolate pie with a smile and a nod of thanks. "You owe me for the fact that I didn't cook, yes," she grinned. "Xavier's doesn't usually have the students going throughout the whole day, so the public places usually stay public to some degree," she explained. In other words, it was hard to find privacy at the mansion, even during school hours. "How have you been doing?" she inquired in a friendly tone, spearing more pie on her fork.

Shrugging, Jean-Paul gestured toward the pies. "This is the high point of my day. And Catseye slept on me, like you said she would. As a large cat." He shrugged again, then ate another bite of pie. "There is an apple pie in the freezer in my suite. But I am saving it."

Laughing at his comment about the large cat, Adrienne shook her head ruefully. "You're hoarding pie? Isn't that a sign of something? Except your head's already messed up so it's probably normal behaviour for you. Were you planning on eating all these pies yourself before I stumbled over you?"

"Oui, all three," Jean-Paul said, nodding complacently as he ate another bite of pie. It was good. "These pies. I needed to find which one I liked best." He smiled a little, though. "How are you?"

"I'm doing well, thanks." She was happier than she'd been in a long time. Funny how orgasms could do that. "So are you eating three pies at once because Morgan thinks you're too skinny and she's been threatening you?"

Nodding again, Jean-Paul ate a dollop of whipped cream and then shrugged. "They are good, also." A bite of the chocolate pie followed that statement and then he sat back. Holding his wrist out for her to see, he raised his brows. "Too thin, oui?"

"Well, the word she used was 'underfed'," Adrienne shrugged, though she gave Jean-Paul's wrist a poke with a mock-scrutinizing eye. "She may not be able to say that much longer if you keep eating three pies a day, though," she pointed out. "Your wrist looks nearly normal. So have you and Morgan been challenging each other to pie-eating competitions or something, now that you're both unemployed? Is that what unemployed people do?" Of course Morgan was substitute teaching, so she wasn't technically unemployed, but Jean-Paul certainly was.

"No," Jean-Paul said, taking another swipe at the whipped cream on the chocolate pie. What it came down to, in the end, was the fact that it was still easier for him to deal with already-prepared food than to face the fact that he couldn't cook a thing to save his life. Literally. If someone asked him how to make paté chinois, he wouldn't be able to tell them how to start it. The middle part he was a little surer of, but then the end of the memory dropped off just as sharply as it began and there was really no telling what the ingredients were in that middle section. "In my old age, I have discovered laziness."

"Old age? You don't look too old," Adrienne pointed out with a smile.

A small smile playing about his lips, Jean-Paul said, "Merci." Then he nudged the chocolate pie closer toward Adrienne.

"Ah, now, I'm the one who's starting to look old," Adrienne confessed, pushing the pie back towards him. "I don't need more chocolate. Especially dating a younger man now; I definitely don't need chocolate. We can't all be like Morgan with her amazing willpower when it comes to the tasty treat... and I don't mean her new man," she smirked.

"Her new man? You mean this Lex?" Jean-Paul got himself another chunk of chocolate pie and then nudged the key lime toward Adrienne instead. "I told him I would step on his insides once everyone else had killed him. If he hurt her." He said it like that was perfectly natural, an absolutely logical statement following the topic of Morgan's new paramour.

"I said I was going to put his insides in the toaster," Adrienne answered in a deadpan tone, taking some pie. She began to laugh. "I think I should toast them before you stomp on them."

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "Then I would not get new blood on my boots. They are difficult to clean, you see." He let himself smile again, just because it was good to know he wasn't the only one who felt the need to make sure this Lex person understood where he stood in the grand scheme of things. "I also told him I just run very fast. We will not tell him otherwise, oui?"

Adrienne giggled at that. "Have I mentioned it's good to have you back, Beaubier? Besides your sense of humour and the fact you share my affection for Morgan, my French has been getting rusty. I hope you'll be up for some more of our sessions now that you've returned."

Sessions? Jean-Paul had a feeling that was something he should recall clearly. He didn't. So he just nodded equably and hoped the subject wouldn't come up again. Then something that Adrienne had said before actually sank in and he asked, "Why is Morgan unemployed?"

Noticing the evasion, Adrienne raised an eyebrow, but left the subject alone. "She didn't tell you she quit her job?" she asked instead. Uh oh. If Morgan was deliberately avoiding telling him because the groundwork had been laid due to his return, Adrienne was caught between a rock and a hard place.

"No," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head. The lemon meringue was almost gone now, but he didn't finish it off because he was busy turning his attention toward Adrienne again. "She does not work with Snow Valley any longer?" He hoped it had nothing to do with the way he'd returned, but he had a niggling sort of feeling that it might.

"Nope. She's been living in my penthouse for a couple of weeks now." Adrienne's mouth twisted and she nearly said more, but she left it at that. Being Morgan's friend meant a lot to her and she wasn't about to betray a confidence. If he asked, she would answer him, because Adrienne felt like maybe he was her friend too, but she wouldn't volunteer the fact that his return had brought it about.

"Mm..." He nodded, going in to finish off the last of the lemon meringue before he continued, "She mentioned the penthouse." And the brownstone as well, actually. Jean-Paul just hadn't put it together that living in one meant she wasn't living in the other... or that not living in the brownstone meant she was no longer working for Snow Valley.

Since she'd mentioned the penthouse but not why she was no longer at the Brownstone, Adrienne assumed Morgan hadn't wanted Jean-Paul to know so she gave him a sheepish smile. "I'm sure she just didn't tell you because she figured it wasn't important. Now that she's going to be substitute teaching, she'll be around a lot more which is what we should take from this conversation, I think." She nodded emphatically, giving him a hopeful look.

"That, and that you are more willing to handle Lex's untoasted innards than I," Jean-Paul said nodding. Reaching over, he put the lids on the pies that still had something in them, then turned to put them in the refrigerator. "You are doing well, though? Where are you staying, if not in the penthouse?" Jean-Paul felt like there were things he should know about the other woman's circumstances that he didn't, but he tried not to let that bother him.

Adrienne tried not to show her momentary confusion about why Jean-Paul didn't know where she lived. "I've never been able to live in the penthouse, what with Steven's ghost." Did he forget how he'd taken her in and let her sleep on his couch when her energy had been eaten away and she'd been too afraid to sleep? "'Course now that I banished the fucker, Morgan has nothing to worry about. I'm still living here. Spending a lot of time over at Garrison Kane's suite, which is maybe why you haven't seen me around my own," she grinned.

"Garrison Kane - he is the younger man you mentioned?" Jean-Paul grabbed two bottles of water and offered one to Adrienne. "I should speak with him as well?" The quirk of his lips implied a conversation similar to the one he'd had with Lex would most likely be had.

Taking the water, Adrienne grinned. "Yes, he is. And you could try to speak with him, but chances are he'd threaten you right back with some deadpan one-line not-really-joking joke. He's got a bit more bite to him than Lex does. Which is one of his many good qualities, I think," she shrugged.

Smiling a little, Jean-Paul nodded. "I will take this under consideration." He wasn't really sure he had any place to have such a talk with the man, anyway. "When did you threaten to toast Lex's innards?"

"I dunno," Adrienne answered with a shrug. "A couple of weeks ago. When she seemed to be going gooey over him. Why, when did you?"

"Last week?" Jean-Paul asked, tipping his head to the side. "I asked him not to short circuit my door if Morgan asked him to. I am not sure he has the strength of will to deny her if she... decides to be persuasive."

"Why would Morgan ask him to short circuit your door? Also, who does have the strength of will to deny her? I could use my powers to figure out your passcode without short circuiting anything, and I might do it if she used her persuasive powers on me- and you'd never know if I did it, would you? Unless she was waiting for you inside, then you'd probably know..." she mused thoughtfully.

"She can get into my room on her own, if she wants to. She threatened to have him do that if I did not open the door myself." Jean-Paul shrugged, cleaning up the final tin container of pie now that it was empty.

"Come now, Beaubier, whyever would you not open the door at once to admit Miss Morgan Lennox?" Adrienne chuckled.

"I did not want company," Jean-Paul said. "And then I nearly dropped her." Shaking his head, he smiled a little at the memory. "Three stories at least. It would not have been good."

"Wait... this actually happened? You didn't want to open the door and she threatened to sic Lex on you? I thought you were joking!" the brunette laughed. "And you were grouchy and nearly dropped her out of a third storey window? How'd she talk you out of it? Persuasion? Bribes?"

"Oui, it really happened. She broke my belt when she hung from it. It was not from the window that I nearly dropped her - it was from the top of the trees while flying." Jean-Paul smiled almost ruefully. "I would have felt bad, if she had broken something in the fall. So I did not let her land."

Adrienne took a moment to stare at Jean-Paul as she tried to digest what he was saying. "Wait... you weren't holding her over the window because you didn't want to let her in?"

"No, I was flying her out the window because she jumped on me after I told her Lex's penis was very small if all it took to run him with electricity was a tiny, dried up bit of carrot," Jean-Paul replied, expression implying this was all perfectly normal.

"I... just... what?" The brunette was stunned into incoherence. "Electricity and carrots and penises?... On second thought, I don't think I want to know... Wait, is that why you seem to enjoy carrots so much?"

Jean-Paul snorted. "Non, carrots are simply good. Everything to do with Morgan's boyfriend's très, très petit penis came afterward, mostly because she would not tell me his name. And so I had to find, in the end, that he was not real."

"Valid conclusion," Adrienne said with an understanding nod. "But did you ever think she didn't want to tell you his name because she didn't want you to go threatening him about dancing on his entrails?"

"Why would she think I would do that?" Jean-Paul asked, brows rising. "I do not shout to the world 'I will threaten your significant partner.'" Then he grinned.

"Of course not! You didn't just mention 'having a talk' with my boyfriend, either!"

"I will have to be more... what is the word - sneaky? Oui. Sneaky," Jean-Paul decided, opening his bottle of water and taking a long sip. "In the future, no one will think I am threatening."

"I bet if you work really hard you'll be sneaky enough to join Scooby Doo's gang," she giggled.

"The dog with the biscuits who is scared of the ghosts?"

"Exactly. Though I'm not sure if you're ready to actually be Scooby yet. You may have to start off being Fred."

Jean-Paul tilted his head to the side. "I do not know Fred. Is he the skinny one in the green shirt?" His childhood had not been filled with cartoons and games, considering the many home he'd bounced through, but he did vaguely recall the dog, at least. Oddly, those memories seemed more complete than his later years. That thought had him rubbing at his temple, though.

"No, that's Shaggy," Adrienne informed him matter-of-factly. "Fred is the preppy guy. He dates the hot chick, though, so... oh wait. Not really a draw for you. Although Shaggy may actually be more bumbling and less sneaky than Fred, so maybe you are Shaggy..."

Donning a mildly affronted look, Jean-Paul said, "I do not bumble."

"Hmm, good point. It probably takes a lot of poise and coordination to dance on entrails."