xp_logs | Jean and Adrienne - Sunday Night Pizza and Beer (Backdated)

After Jean meets with Jean-Paul, Jean and Adrienne attempt to de-stress with pizza and beer and talk about feelings and the nature of friendship.

Two pizzas were sitting on her coffee table awaiting Jean's arrival. After finding out from Jean-Paul that Jean didn't plan to eat until Tuesday, the psychometrist had feigned a medical emergency to get Jean to come up to her suite. Adrienne stared at her computer screen, where to keep herself from yelling at the horrible umpiring of the baseball game, she was doing sun salutations in the middle of her floor. She'd been so angry for so long it seemed, she hoped yoga would help curb another rage spiral. Instead she gritted her teeth and kept herself from screaming by inhaling and exhaling much more fervently than necessary. After another blown call she let out a strangled scream as she went into cobra position.

Jean slowed to a stop as she walked through the door, blinking a little at the sound of yelling. She sat down beside Adrienne, glancing up at the screen.

"Yoga and baseball...interesting combination. Though, generally 'ohm' is the default utterance for the yoga part, anyway."

She could tell she was not okay, but that was part of the reason of why she came.

"Hey," Adrienne greeted with a wan smile, ending her sun salutation and flopping down on the couch. She gestured at the pizzas she'd ordered. "I wasn't sure what you wanted so I got two half-pies. One's half spinach-and-feta, half veggie, the other's half ham-and-pineapple, half pepperoni. Want a beer?" she asked, getting up again and moving towards the kitchenette.

Glancing up from where she still sat on the floor, Jean pulled herself up to a stand. "I like beer," she said with a smile, slipping her hands into her pockets as she sat down beside her.

"Fat Tony's pizza..." she added, studying the boxes with a nod of approval.

"I'm pretty sure I won't be disappointed by any of the choices."

Fat Tony's was one of the newer pizza joints in town but they were really good so far. She'd expect no less from a place with 'fat' in the title. Now if it were called Thin Tony's....

Adrienne returned with two bottles of beer and clapped her laptop screen closed so she wouldn't be tempted to yell at it anymore. It was time to de-stress. She needed to turn everything that was upsetting her off and try to reset. There were paper plates and napkins accompanying the beer as well, though Adrienne picked a slice of spinach and feta up and just started eating it. "How're you doing?" she asked Jean through a mouthful of pizza.

Jean rested her chin in her hand, squinting a little. "You know, I've been getting that a lot lately from people I should be the one asking that to," she said. She leaned back against the couch, snagging a piece of pepperoni pizza.

"Should I be numb or angry? Or both?"

"My answer is both," Adrienne shrugged. "Definitely both. But that's just because that's what I'm feeling and I don't want to be the only one. Although I do seem to be leaning more towards anger these days. Taking it out on Warren and Angelo because I can't take it out on the people who hurt her."

"We all care about her. But being angry at one another...that isn't going to solve anything. We need to be united on this, for her sake," Jean said.

Resting her head on the back of the couch, Jean stared up at the ceiling.

"I guess if I had to pick one it would be numb. I'm...a little surprised. I figured it'd be the other one."

Traditionally she tended to favor that reaction.

"I know it doesn't. But it's not as if the two of them are giving an inch either, so the stubborn part of me-which is all of it- thinks if they're taking it out on me it's only fair I give it back to them. I suppose this is how wars start," she added ruefully, taking a pull on her beer. "And now I don't want to be the one to have to apologize. "I've been going through a lot of numb, too, though. It's... well, it doesn't feel much better, really, but at least numb doesn't have you picking fights with everyone, right? So cheers to that?" She offered her beer over to Jean's for a salute.

Jean hadn't really touched her pizza except for mostly holding onto it with one hand as she used the other to clink her bottle against Adrienne's. She took a long drink.

"We all care about her. We all helped get her back. And we'll all be here for her. At the end of the day that's all that matters."

Jean put the slice of pizza down in the box, resting her bottle of beer in her hands, her fingers tingling from the cold. She stared down at the top of the bottle.

"I've tried to feel something fully for awhile. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't."

"She's gonna be alright though, right?" Adrienne asked. "Once you take her out of the coma you put her in? So that'll help you feel something fully... make things... better for you? It must have been hard for you, putting her in that coma," she added, and reached out to squeeze Jean's hand.

Looking down, Jean squeezed Adrienne's hand back. "With the coma...I was doing my job. It was easy to distance myself, to tell myself she could finally rest and heal. But once they leave my care...it's up to them. And sometimes I can hear their thoughts, or their emotions seeping through the barriers I put up...what they try to hide from everyone. Her body may be fine. Her mind....not so much. With that much trauma...months of torture she...." She closed her eyes.

"It's going to be hard for her."

Adrienne's face was dark for a moment, but that was all she allowed herself. This had to stop, this anger and darkness and pain. It was like being married again. Maybe she hadn't been through the torture Vanessa had, but Adrienne had been through her own form of torture once upon a time and she'd gotten through it, she was stronger than that and she wasn't about to be beaten by the likes of it again, or allow her friends to be beaten by it. She gave Jean her biggest smile. "Well, that's what she has us for, right?" She squeezed Jean's hand again. "We're gonna get her through this. We're all going to get through it."

Jean took a drink of her beer, draining nearly half of it in three short gulps. She didn't squeeze her hand back this time but she didn't pull away. She just sat there, processing, compiling.

"I know. We always do," she said softly. And here was where the numbness came back, creeping in like a fog.

"What's wrong?" the brunette inquired. "Are things getting awkward? I promise I'm not coming on to you," she joked. But she let go of Jean's hand anyway, under the pretense of getting another slice of pizza and sipping at her beer.

Jean glanced over, quirking a brow at her curiously before she found a little laugh escaping, cutting through the fog like a ray of sunlight.

"I just..." Jean shook her head. "I wish this hadn't happened."

"Wish what hadn't happened, sweetie?" Adrienne asked. Because she was pretty sure there was something more Jean was getting at than what Adrienne assumed. Of course she wouldn't wish Vanessa had been kidnapped. So what did she mean?

"So many things. People kidnapped, tortured, injured, killed...It happens, and it never stops. I just wish we could catch them before they try," Jean said.

"But it can't be done nothing short of discovering time travel. So we do what we can to pick up the pieces. To help, and be there for one another."

"This is what's been drummed into my head," Adrienne replied with a wry smirk. "You're right. There is nothing else to be done. You can't even run or hide from it. Shit happens and all we can do is hang on to each other to try and get through it. And isn't that a lovely sentiment?" she chuckled. "Christ, I could use some retail therapy to get my mind out from under this doom cloud. Or, like... a spa day or something. As soon as Vee's well enough that I can stop worrying about her and enjoy myself, that is."

It was very hard to lose the smile Adri had put on Jean's face. It lingered without her realizing it. She even laughed softly, despite herself.

"A spa sounds nice."

How long had it been since she'd been to one of those? She found it particularly sad that she couldn't remember.