Vanessa, Warren & Jean | BACKDATED Sunday morning

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

A drunken Jean goes home with Vanessa after going out to celebrate Doug and Haller's birthdays rather than find a way back to the mansion and then proceeds to wander where she's really not supposed to be.

Jean tossed and turned on Vanessa's couch, which she had for some reason thought was infinitely nicer than the bed at that moment in time. She was drunk, but not drunk enough to pass out yet and therefore squinted at the ceiling, making shapes out of the shadows that were cast from the curtains. Duck...bear....constipated rabbit....freight-liner...

Eventually she got bored and let out a snort, tossing the pillow she was holding aside. It flew across the room, bouncing off the bookshelf nearby and knocking off a few books to the ground. Jean's eyes widened and she immediately covered her mouth, giggling. "Whoops."

Now, the reason why she was on the couch and in the apartment in the first place was her alcohol-induced, sailor-like walk, which she put to good use by stumbling across the apartment, occasionally grabbing onto something sturdy for dear life. Upon making it to the bookshelf, Jean gave herself a proud grin and patted herself on the shoulder. It was the little victories she cherished.

Bending down, Jean tried once, twice, then three times to grab a book, which there happened to be two of for some reason. Finally, she managed to pluck the book from the ground...and then promptly forgot why she'd come over there and tossed the book back on the ground.

Shrugging, Jean looked about, patting various things to see how soft and/or hard they were. In her journey around the room she spied Vanessa's door half open. She hadn't meant to look, but it was the weird blobby not-blue shape in the bed that drew her closer, and closer, until....

"AHHH! OH...GOD, WARREN? My EYES!" Jean said, quickly covering her face with her hands. "Why are you naked...IN THE BED! That does NOT look like a comfortable position!" Jean stumbled backward, and the pillow that had fallen off the ground shot across the room, pushing back the partially open door to land on the problem dangly bits.

It had taken Jean yelling for Warren to notice her bumbling about - okay sure, he was awake, but when that awake involved a very naked girlfriend, what was going on anywhere but in the bed didn't really register.

He scrambled to pull away from Vanessa when Jean started yelling, initially thinking there was some sort of problem they needed to react to. But it soon registered that it was his nudity that was the problem and he caught the pillow that was flying towards him, holding it in front of him. His wings stretched out to block Vanessa from Jean's view - he wasn't entirely sure how Vanessa felt about Jean seeing her naked, but he didn't really want anyone other than him seeing her like that.

"Jean, what are you doing?" And how have you not passed out yet? Warren knew she'd crashed here after drinks for someone's birthday, but surely she should be asleep by now. Especially considering how drunk she still seemed.

Unlike Jean, however, Vanessa wasn't one to allow herself to get drunk. As such, she had only gotten moderately tipsy and most of that had burned off by now. The distraction of all the lovely sensations Warren had been providing, however, had made her a little slow to react to her friend's intrusion. The fixation on the loss of that sensation didn't help. By time she had gotten up enough to kneel on the bed behind Warren his wings were out to their full reach as a convenient little shield.

Very casually, Vanessa folded an arm across the back of Warren's shoulders and perched her chin there. Her other hand was idly running down his wing as she peered over at Jean. "Mm...so does this mean you're not so much into the watching and would rather join?" Apparently she was the only one here who was amused and she wore the smile to prove it.

Jean's eyes widened, and she immediately covered her hands with her face. "The door was open and no thank you and I...need to go now. Away, from the naked," she said, doing a drunken 180 as she wobbled toward the door, still in her party clothes, which she did a good job of not spilling anything on them.

She hadn't really slept, really. It was odd to her but pleasant in its fuzziness until this part.

Fumbling with the lock, Jean managed to get it open and soon looked for the exit. Finding a pretty good looking candidate for the door, which was strangely upstairs rather than downstairs like she remembered, Jean tried to open it but found the door locked and she started to fiddle with the handle, completely oblivious to the fact that it said "Office" on the door. Being pitch black in the middle of the hallway probably helped. "There are naked people back there that I do not want to see....please let me out!"

"... I think I'm a little offended," Warren said to Vanessa after Jean fled, a slightly bemused expression on his face. "I don't look that bad naked, do I?" He tossed the pillow back on the bed, before climbing off it to look for his pants. "I suspect we should go after her. I'm not sure the world is ready for her in this state."

"I don't think she's ready for the world in that state, either." Vanessa watched Warren move, obviously appreciative of the view, before she snapped her attention away and went looking for some sort of clothing. What she found was his shirt and despite the large holes in its back for his wings it was the best she would do. And it technically covered everything she needed covered. Thank God for not dating a short man.

"Why do all my friends react with ow, ow, my eyes when they see you naked? I happen to think you look better without clothes," she mused aloud as she padded out the bedroom and through the flat so she could try to figure out where the hell Jean had gone.

Warren followed her, having found his pants, and had been about to slip an arm around her waist when she asked that question, and instead he just gave her a strange look. "What other friends of yours have seen me naked?" Warren was missing something here, clearly. Because he was pretty sure he didn't know of any others. Except Wade, who definitely had not reacted like that. But that clearly was not the point here.

In an obvious move to avoid the topic Vanessa said, "Do you hear something?" She paused in the fall and could hear someone talking about naked people. It sounded like it was upstairs so she followed the sound hoping to find Jean at the end of it. Warren didn't really need to know about Jean-Paul's curiosity getting the best of him, did he?

A quiet thump followed the random talking, and a warm breeze wafted throughout the floor as they approached. The door to the roof, marked 'roof exit' lay open, swinging in the wind. The hint of stars peeked out from behind the door.

When the breeze hit Warren he frowned, distracted from questioning Vanessa by his concern for Jean. "... she hasn't gone up on the roof," he said in disbelief, before moving more quickly up the stairs. It was bad enough that there was a drunk Jean wandering around, her wandering around on the roof was not a good idea at all.

"Fuck," was all the response he got before Vanessa likewise sprinted up the stairs. She got to the top before him only by nature of already being ahead of him to begin with. The door had been forced open, likely telekinetically. "Bloody gingers," Vanessa muttered and ran out onto the roof in her bare feet. Thank god for concrete roofs. Jean would have been slain if this had been gravel. "Oi! Red Hots, where are you going?" She gave Warren a look that she hoped silently conveyed that she wanted his winged ass in the air to grab said crazy redhead if she went off the edge or some such.

Warren nodded, quickly launching into the air, moving around around to try and locate their errant friend. On a normal day he wouldn't be worried about Jean at all, she'd be able to catch herself if anything happened, but tonight... well, alcohol had a tendency to play havok with anyone's control.

Jean was on the other side of the roof. She had quickly determined the exit was not up there, but the weather was pleasant, so she instead decided that the company of the gargoyle on the corner would be a fine place to look at the view. She was perched on its back, peering down at the streets below. She'd never had vertigo, really, so the tiny streets and cars were fun to watch.

The sound of blaring voices both inside and out made her turn and she tilted her head with a bright smile. "Hey...no one's naked," she said, giving them the thumbs up.

Warren landed back on the roof, eyeing Jean carefully. The spot he'd chosen was close enough that he could catch her if it seemed like she was going to start falling. "That is usually how people are when they're in bed," he replied, sounding a little amused. "Do I really look that terrible naked?" He may have started pouting along with the question.

Distracted by a honking horn, Jean looked back over the edge, the wind catching her hair and making it look like dancing flames from the lights below.

She squinted at Warren skeptically. "Warren...what would you say if you saw me naked ?" Her index finger cut through the air like a dagger as she pointed it at him, answering her own question, as well as the reaction from the inadvertent mental image that came up. "Precisely!.. You'd say...'oh my God!' too...followed by 'damn, run away!'.....Because we're buddies...and you're like...my winged brother...of...wings...and also both dating people who are themed in primary colors..." She nodded to Vanessa. "And therefore are restricted to only seeing them naked...and vice versa...on principle...so I am not going to answer that question with anything other than...Yes, verrry terrible."

Even when drunk she still had an academically derived vocabulary. Slurred, but still a vocabulary.

A hand rubbed at her forehead while Vanessa shook her head and listened to Jean's argument, which likely made far more sense to Jean than it did to Vanessa. In a flat, almost bored voice usually meant to usher children and the like the metamorph said, "Alright, so now that we've established you two are like siblings and not into incest and that you like dating people in primary colors will the fiery drunkard please come back inside? And maybe actually take the bed in the spare bedroom this time instead of wandering into mine and completely disrupting my attempts to achieve orgasm?"

Jean stared at Vanessa for a moment before she hopped down, curling her nose. "At least someone's getting some..." she said as she stumbled back toward where she thought the roof door was. Man she could go for some ravishing right about now. Perhaps she should give Scott a call later....that sounded nice.

"Hang on sweetheart." Warren caught Jean before she stumbled too far, wrapping an arm around her before guiding her in the right direction. He contemplated commenting on the fact that seeing her naked would fulfill a teenage fantasy or two, but he suspected now was not the time for that sort of comment.

"If you don't take it easier, I'm going to have to carry you to bed. Do you really want that?"

"Wow....that wasn't the way to the door, thanks...I..what? No no..." Jean said, waving the thought away. "I can walk...yes...." she said, until she made it to the stairs, and realized going up stairs was easier than going downstairs. The result was a decidedly sad face as she precariously grabbed onto the stair rail.

"Bother."

Shaking her head, Vanessa sighed and moved up beside her friend. She grabbed the woman's arm and slung it over her shoulders and wrapped her own arm around Jean's waist. She didn't have much of a height advantage to work with Jean but she still pulled up enough to take most of the other woman's weight. "C'mon you. If you don't go back down the two flights of stairs you came up then you're sleeping on the stairs, lovely." She nodded her head for Warren to go ahead of them so he could do any catching that could wind up being necessary.

Jean curled her nose, frowning. "Okay," she said as she tried to focus enough to keep herself coordinated and walking. The stairs were hard, so very hard, but with their help she managed to find her way back into the apartment and back to...

"The couch!" she announced, pointing. "Squishy!"

"No no no," Warren said, trying to be smooth about it. "We're going to put you to bed. By yourself." There was a little bit of a wicked grin from him. "Unless you do want to join Vanessa and I, but I'm not sure you'd get much sleep in that case."

It wasn't nice to laugh at drunk people, right? A hand clamped over Vanessa's mouth in an attempt to keep her from laughing but all it did was muffle the sound a bit. "The bed is squishy, too," she managed to mumble eventually. "In the guest room. Very squishy. You can even sleep on top of the down comforter for more squish." They were totally going to find Jean on the couch again come morning.

Jean swatted Warren (gently) in the back of the head. "Why do you both insist on tormenting me? And laughing...you... What did I do to yoooou?" she pointed towards Vanessa but completely missed her mark and her gesture went completely past her.

"And the couch....it has arms," Jean said, trying to fling her arms up to enunciate but her legs wound up giving out and she caught herself in midair. She blinked sheepishly. "Whoops."

"Come on, drunky." Warren just grinned and scooped her up in his arms. "No more flailing from you. I like my nose as it is, not broken."

Vanessa's lips were pursed together as she simply shook her head and watched Warren walk off with Jean. The million dollar question, of course, was whether or not the redhead would remember this in the morning.

* * *

The next morning Jean wakes up with a hangover and talks to Vanessa about her newly discovered information. Vanessa proceeds to then burn the eggs.

When Vanessa emerged from her bedroom it was later than usual for her, likely thanks to the antics of the previous night. Not simply the antics where she tried to get the birthday boys completely trashed, convinced one to slow dance with her and generally got up to mischief. No, it was chasing around the drunken ginger on her roof that really disrupted her sleep. Those blackout curtains Jean-Paul had so generously gifted her with - to save his eyes should there be a naked Worthington, really - really helped with sleeping in. She was still wearing Warren's shirt, seemingly undisturbed by the large slits in the back of it for his wings which she was thinking of simply as air vents. Luckily for Jean the metamorph had eventually found her underwear and put them on before coming out. Very lucky, in fact, as Jean was once again on the couch.

Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Vanessa stared down at the sprawling women. An arm and a leg hung off the couch and a pillow was on top of her head. It didn't look particularly comfortable. The metamorph shrugged and shuffled off toward the kitchen to make some coffee. The pot was all set and starting to work her magic when she eyed the couch again. Hadn't they left Jean in the other bedroom last night?

The first thing Jean became aware of when she woke up that morning was the headache and a dry taste in her mouth. The second thing was the bright bits of light that threatened to creep in around the sides of her eyes where something covering them failed to reach. Jean slowly sat up, blinking away the heavy stupor that had fallen over her. Her head started to pound and she immediately laid back down a moment later, letting out a quiet groan.

The sound of movement (and a psi signature near by) from the recesses of the kitchen made Jean tilt her head that direction, still covered by her pillow. "I hate tequila."

"I never fed you any tequila," Vanessa pointed out in return. "I may have fed you vodka or rum, however. I don't recall tequila. I hear it's a vile drink prone to send perfectly reputable adults running amock and shucking their dignity." She wondered whether or not the doctor remembered her reaction to accidentally walking in on some naked, intimate time the previous night.

"I think Warren did it. Or possibly Haller. It's fuzzy," Jean said, putting her hand to her temple.

She paused for a moment, tilting her head at the other woman as the spark of a mental image, unfortunately not kept back due to headache and loud Vanessa thoughts, rekindled her memory. "So...Warren, huh?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. Without the wild-making qualities of liquor to loosen her tongue, she could approach things more calmly and rationally, instead of behaving like a 12 year old.

Vanessa made her way over to the couch with a glass of cool water and some aspirin. The water glass was dangled within Jean's field of vision so she would take it and the hand with the aspirin was dangled in turn after it was.

"Yeah, Warren," was all the reply her friend got on that front. Vanessa had been criticized before for her choice in boyfriends. Not by Jean, mind, but by others she had trusted to not sort of give her funny looks and act like she might have been a little off the rails. Now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure people had only ever had that reaction to Sam. Then again, Vanessa hadn't been around much to see what reactions to her dating Lex had been. That one had likely made more sense to people, at least. Warren...well, they probably didn't make much sense as a couple to others most likely.

Jean took Vanessa's generous offerings with a grateful nod she took a sip of water, followed by a couple of aspirin. She fell silent for a moment, her features unreadable before giving her a genuine smile. "I'm glad."

It was a surprising combination, someone she hadn't thought of, but not completely out of the realm of possibility. And upon further introspection, it was a good thing, for both of them, to have one another.

The metamorph quirked an eyebrow upward. "You're glad?" That was a reaction. It wasn't the one she was expecting something along the lines of asking how that ever happened was more what Vanessa had been anticipating.

Jean smirked. "Were you expecting me to say 'no, bad?'" she said, setting the glass down on the table after finishing it off. Water helped. "If you love each other, that's what matters. You know what works for you, and so does Warren. And perhaps a change of what you're used to is a good thing." She wanted to see them both happy.

A single word had knocked Vanessa off balance: love. "I think it's a little too soon to be throwing words like love around, mate. And, uh, I just wasn't expecting you to be glad. People never react the way I expect about who I date. Generally there's a bit of criticism in the reaction." Amanda had done that. It was still something that rankled at Vanessa. Amanda had not exactly been unsupportive of her dating Sam Guthrie but you couldn't have called it supportive either. "I was expecting something more akin to asking if it was due to drunkenness and we had simply forgotten to reel sanity back into the picture."

Actually. Now that she thought about it. That was sort of accurate for how things had progressed for them, wasn't it? The relationship, in many ways, had simply been the next logical step. Vanessa genuinely cared for him, though, and his mere proximity seemed to make a whole host of unpleasant things disappear. That was certainly something.

Jean laughed. She generally called it love. Perhaps it was an old-fashioned notion or a word. She was used to her parents, to Scott, with the idea if you dated someone you loved them, in your own specific way. To some that was a simple peck on a cheek and a fondness for that person over most, to others it was full-fledged mad, head over heels infatuation. But the general idea of the word in context was not the best to use to someone who flinched in the face of it with a sense of trepidation. She was beginning to understand that now.

"I guess I'm not most people," she said, resting her chin in her hand. As was Vanessa. Someone not predictable. Sometimes it drove her mad, even despite what she knew, what she broadcast.

"I've assumed wrongly before. I expect the worse now," Vanessa told her friend without much emotion in the words. "Speaking of the worst, coffee will help with the headache. The V8 in the fridge will help with the general grossness of post-night-of-drinking. And there's only a one-in-eight chance I will burn breakfast." She grinned. Vanessa had grown up in a household full of food and home cooking. She had spent large swaths of time during her formative years in a butcher shop. She had been shaped in battlefields, though. If it wasn't noodles, frozen or out of a box it was always a bit iffy how her cooking may turn out. Now, if you wanted her to kill a man without being caught...that she could do with far more confidence.

"Hmmm...I think I'll take those odds," Jean said as she leaned her head back against the couch with a smile, closing her eyes for a moment. She found if her vision was not eye level, it would help with not seeing as much sunlight behind her eyelids. And as far as expecting the worse, she was silent on the subject, as lately she herself had been finding the worse was starting to be the norm as well. But she wanted to believe in better. It had to be better. "And if not, the charcoal will add a little flavor."

"A bit of cayenne and maybe a splash of hot sauce and you won't even taste the charcoal." Vanessa sounded a bit more chipper than a lot of people would have liked at that hour. She was, however, a morning person. Or, rather, she had become a morning person since coming back to the States. She was something of an Eastern European and East African late morning person, really. Her sleep schedule had simply never adjusted since here she kept something akin to normal people hours.

"Then it becomes a Cajun breakfast. Remy would be proud," Jean said. She had hope for that at least, that Remy was still alive, so she referred to him in the present tense. It would do no good to dwell and think otherwise.

Opening her eyes, she pulled herself up to stand, quite happy when her legs actually cooperated in this endeavor, and shuffled her way into the kitchen. "V8, you said?"

"That I did." Vanessa pulled out a glass and the bottle of vegetable juice and set them down on the counter in front of the redhead before going back to rifling around for frozen hash browns and bacon to add to the eggs and vegetables she had pulled out already. "LeBeau would probably tell me the spices were wrong or it was a bad attempt, most likely, so you shouldn't think of it as Cajun so much as Frat Boy Chic maybe." It seemed very much like a drunk guy thing to do, covering up the burnt bits with spice and hot sauce.

Jean laughed as she grabbed the glass and put it against her forehead, liking the coolness against her skin. "Since I don't really equate you with a frat boy, how about trashy gourmet?" she said, glancing over her shoulder with a purely playful, loving grin.

Vanessa considered that in the midst of pulling out a heavy skillet. "Yeah, I guess I could qualify as trashy. But I'll have you know," she said, pointing and shaking the skillet in her friend's direction, "I'm very high class for a white trash sorta girl. Erm. Or do I only count as blue trash now?"

"Hmm," Jean said after taking a sip from her glass. "It does have a nice ring to it....so I would have to say yes." She peered down at the drink, curling her nose. It sort of reminded her of a Bloody Mary, without the Mary.

"Blue trash," she considered aloud. After cracking an egg a grin blossomed on her face. "You know it's higher class because of all the extra pigment." An arm was held out to Jean and shaken from side to side in a lookit gesture.

"Adds a touch of the exotic," Jean said with a smirk as, against her better judgment, she took another sip of the V8. She peered over her shoulder at the culinary concoction cooking on the stove.

"Smells good so far."

"And if the scent of food doesn't wake up lover boy then nothing will." Not that she could hold it against him, really. Without anything like a real schedule to keep she'd probably be keeping much stranger hours than he currently did. A bit of sleeping would get him picked on by her, but at least it would be minor.

"I believe that's my cue," Warren said with a smile as he wandered into the kitchen. He'd been awake for a little while, but had let the ladies talk without his presence for awhile. But now there was food, so being out of bed was necessary. He'd gone to the trouble of finding some jeans to pull on, but that was as far as he'd gone with the whole getting dressed thing. Especially considering Vanessa was wearing his shirt. He probably had another one lying around the place somewhere, but really, shirts were overrated.

"Good morning ladies."

"Ah, that was a Prince Charming timed entrance there." Vanessa pointed her spatula at him, trying her damnedest to hold onto her look of suspicion but it was crumbling at a startlingly rapid rate. If questioned she was deny that she found herself completely unable to stop from smiling at the sight of her tousled sweetie. Once he was close enough Vanessa dropped a brief kiss onto his cheek and slid an empty coffee mug his way and turned back toward the stove. It was possible she was a little paranoid about burning something. Well, not the hash browns. They had started their life frozen and would defrost-slash-bake just fine in the oven with the bacon. Bacon was so much more manageable in the oven. It was the eggs that were the trouble, what with their miscellaneous vegetables scrambled into them and their penchant for blackening on the bottom of her pans.

And then there was Warren, without his shirt again. At least this time he wasn't completely naked.

"Hello Fabio," Jean said with a grin as she leaned against the counter.

The headache had become easier to manage the longer she was awake and was moving around, downgrading to a manageable pain, right on par there with a late night in Washington around a cavalcade of politicians after a particularly long day.

"Please," Warren sniffed playfully, picking up the coffee mug so he could help himself to the coffee. Hmmm, there were benefits to being the second out of bed. Not that he'd admit that out loud. "I'm far better looking than he is."

Jean laughed. "You're right, forgive me," she mused as she once more tried her luck with the V8. It seemed to be helping. "But that hair...There's something wrong about a man having better long hair than a woman."

Vanessa wrinkled her nose. "If I wanted someone with hair that long I'd fuck a woman. There is something so distinctly emasculating by long hair on a man unless he's a biker or metalhead. Long hair takes time and effort to deal with, though." Her eyes flicked down to her own hair that hung loose over her shoulders. "I don't do men who are higher maintenance than I am getting ready." Vanessa was the sort of woman who took about fifteen minutes to get ready unless she had to dress up for something.

"You mean you don't like someone you can go shopping for hairspray with?" Jean said with a grin. She paused.

"I smell burning."

Sniffing the air for a moment, Vanessa's face fell. She looked down to the eggs and snatched the skillet off the burner. It moved to a cold burner instead and she went digging about with the spatula in search of the damage. "Well...the good news is the eggs are done. The bad news is they're burnt. The other good news is there isn't much that's burnt." Her expression was hopeful as she looked at her friend and then over at her boyfriend.

"I like your hair as it is," Warren said to Vanessa with a smile, before his gaze flickered down to the eggs. I'm going to get in trouble if I suggest we go out for breakfast, aren't I? He thought hard at Jean, before pressing a kiss against Vanessa's cheek.

"I'll get the plates."

Jean turned and opened up the cupboards. "And I'll get the spices." As she began to rummage, she glanced over to Warren with a smile, hidden by her hair. No comment.