Vanessa and Adrienne - Careers Talk

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

In a post-Chinese food comatose state, Vanessa ponders her future career options and Adrienne has suggestions of varying degrees of usefulness.

Vanessa was sprawled out with a leg dangling off the couch, a hand dangling off the back of it, her other foot on the arm of it and her head in Adrienne's lap. There was very possibly a little too much Chinese food in her stomach. They really needed a new schtick or Vanessa was going to have to work out twice as much to keep up with their habit. Damn, that was inconvenient. Was she that old already? "Kid, whore, mercenary, teacher, spy...mostly unemployed substitute?" She squinted at the ceiling, brain caught up in that amazing resume right there. "Seriously, teacher and spy almost make me sound dignified but then I got right back down into mostly unemployed substitute. I could always go back to whoring," she joked a bit more lightly than she may have once. "I mean, there's always socially inept guys with libidos and a lot of money and no one willing to lay them of their own free will. But I think I've grown standards in my old age. Aye, and Lex wouldn't approve."

"Old age blows," Adrienne mused, idly playing with Vanessa's hair, twisting a lock around a finger. "Damn standards. Damn disapproving boyfriend. Even though having a boyfriend, especially one who disapproves of you whoring, actually trumps whoring, in my mostly naive opinion. You could always go back to being a kid," she suggested, sounding completely serious.

"I could," Vanessa considered with an expression of utmost thoughtfulness. "I mean, I could run around, scrape some knees, kick the boys' asses in stick ball. I was fucking brilliant at stick ball, for the record. No tea parties. I wasn't that kind of girl then, still haven't grown into that kinda girl now. Aye, I could have forts, a tree house, plan to conquer the world with the power of my mind." Vanessa's eyes suddenly went wide, lit up and fixed on her friend. "I could be an evil genius!"

"It's a demanding career choice, but I think if you speak to your guidance counselor and keep your grades up you could make a living as an evil genius, yes," Adrienne responded thoughtfully. She went back to playing with Vanessa's hair. "Mercenary, spy, and whore would help you out a lot with that career. Of course there are a lot of career options you can have with that resume that are less evil," she pointed out.


Vanessa pretended to think about what that resume could get her that was less evil. "Stripper, porn star, porn director, strip club enforcer, soldier of fortune, CIA operative, a life in the National Guard?" Did the National Guard people actually do anything? Vanessa knew, more or less, what the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force did. What did the National Guard do? Did they guard stuff? Didn't the Marines usually guard stuff like embassies in other countries? They weren't guarding the coast, that's what the pansies in the Coast Guard were for.

"Member of Scooby Doo's mystery-solving gang?" Adrienne giggled. "A mercenary-spy-whore would be most welcome to them, I'm sure. I bet Fred would be all over that."

"You mean Shaggy. Shaggy would try to get me high and then tape Scooby mounting me while I'm hallucinating that he's Velma." Vanessa snorted softly at that mention image. She probably should have been a little more grossed out by the prospect of being fucked doggy style by an actual talking dog. It was a clear sign of something or other that she didn't much care.

"Okay now that I actually have the image in my head I realize I didn't mean either, because that's just fucked up no matter how you look at it," Adrienne said with a note of horror in her voice. "I don't even know how that works logistically, that you'd be hallucinating that the dog humping you is a chick."

Actually, Vanessa had no idea how that worked either. She had only one answer. "Strap on?"

"But it's a male dog, I don't... never mind. I don't want that mental image in my head," Adrienne frowned. "Dogs aside, though, you'd make a kickass member of the Scooby-Doo mystery solving gang, for real. You could solve mysteries." Anticipating some protest, she quickly added "seriously; you've been a mercenary, and a spy, and a whore. You're able to compartmentalize and do whatever it takes to do the job. Why not solve mysteries?"

There was definitely a protest, or at least a brush off, coming that Adrienne had talked right over. "I'm not qualified to solve mysteries. I can track people down and beat them up and snoop around for information, but I need a mystery to solve first." Red eyes narrowing, Vanessa pointed a finger up at her friend. "I am not going to be one of those ghost hunter twats who try to prove a place is haunted or not. So don't get those thoughts in your head, pet."

"I'm not," Adrienne made a face; "you were kind of crappy at ghostbusting, Sassafrass." She thought about this for a moment, combing her fingers through Vanessa's hair absentmindedly. "Your attitude is a little disappointing. Why couldn't you go find mysteries to solve? Qualify yourself? Be the boss yourself instead of working for someone like Remy?" She stopped combing and frowned in thought. "Joking aside, why couldn't you take tests to qualify as a private investigator? You were good as a Trenchcoat- if you were your own boss you wouldn't get stuck in compromising moral situations, right?"

"Well, yeah, I wouldn't." Now Vanessa was frowning as she thought. "I'm pretty sure you probably need real credentials to be a P.I. And I'm pretty sure 'mercenary' isn't a job skill they want a P.I. to have." Private investigators weren't cops, though, so they didn't need that level of training, did they? "I do know someone who could probably make it look like I had those qualifications. And it's not like the mercenary stuff is tied to the Carlysle name. Hm..." The drummed two fingers against her lips while she considered that. It'd be like Snow Valley only without all the dodgy morals if she didn't want it to be. Or at least only her own dodgy morals. And less weird shite. Vanessa wasn't the one with the evil people who can possess you contacts. She was the one with the evil people who will kill you without blinking contacts. "Maybe I'll look into it and see what their pre-reqs are."

"You should!" Adrienne agreed. "Doug could make it look like you had qualifications for anything! Well, I mean, except things like, prostitute, probably, but hey, you're already qualified for that, and you're not working as one of those anyway."

"Your helpful enthusiasm is a little disturbing, you know that?" Vanessa wondered if Doug liked her enough to hack into whatever and fudge her qualifications for her. He was among the few people she ever talked to casually over at Snow Valley. She was on good terms with him. It was entirely possible. She'd look into that right after the qualifications. "I think qualifying to be a whore just involves an oral exam, Saffron."

"Haha. Oral," Adrienne giggled. "Hey, you could still be a model if you can't qualify to be a PI and Doug can't fudge it for you. You've already been... examined by the boss; that's all the qualification you need," she teased, twirling Vanessa's hair around her fingers again.

"I'll add 'slinky' onto my list of job skills and think about if I wanna use said skill for evil or not." If she got really bored, or money ended up in a position she wasn't thrilled with then Vanessa might actually consider it. Chances were she'd become a mercenary first, but for a good cause maybe not. Or just for Adrienne because Vanessa was a little wrapped around the other woman's finger. In a platonic way.