xp_logs | LOG: Terry & Bobby

Terry and Bobby finally talk about their relationship. Nothing gets resolved, and it goes about as awkwardly as you might expect.

It was late enough that avoiding the students was not too difficult as Terry made her way to Bobby's office, working off her memory to locate it. And avoiding students was probably a good thing when one was carrying a bottle of Jameson and a pair of shot glasses pinched between her thumb and index finger. She tucked the bottle under her arm and tried the door handle without knocking, then bumped the door in with her hip. She stood in the doorway and exhaled a short, sharp sigh as if bracing herself for the coming moments before she said, "So. I am thinking we should be having a moment.

Bobby had been spending more and more time in his office even after the students had left. And let's face it, there weren't too many students currently at the mansion, and it wasn't taking Drake two hours to grade a math quiz or two. But it seemed like the primary reason he had been avoiding going back to his suite, the same reason it felt awkward for him whenever he picked up his cellphone over the past few months, had found him. As he peeled his eyes up from his lesson plan, he could tell that his avoidance wouldn't be able to last much longer. Swallowing deeply, he set his red pen down on his desk, inter-crossing his fingers in front of his face. "Sure thing. What's on your mind." As if he really had to ask.

Terry took the bottle out from under her arm and crossed the space to his desk, setting and the glasses down on top of some of those already finished papers. She was dressed simply in jeans and a sweater layered over a tank top, so there was no care taken in her movements when she took a chair and dragged it to the desk's side and flopped into it. "You are. All the time," she finally answered, avoiding looking at him by dragging the bottle of alcohol closer to her and cracking the top.

Bobby cracked a half sarcastic smile at her response. "Well I am an awfully charming guy." Drake knew exactly what she meant, but from the time he was a teenager, he always tried to handle awkward situations with humor. But still, seeing his wife not even able to look him in the eyes affected him. It was easier to just try and ignore what was going on with Terry, and only focus on his own feelings while she was over an ocean. But when confronted with it right in front of his face, it was much more difficult to shove away, and only think about his own reaction. "To be honest, I'm thinking about you a lot too." It was best to be tactical. And it wasn't a lie, just that Terry wouldn't always like the thoughts that were going through his head.

Terry bit her lower lip, catching it between her teeth and gnawing on a scrap of skin while she focused on pouring whiskey into both glasses. She set the bottle down and pushed one glass toward him, then looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. "Aye?" she asked, a little bit hopeful. She settled back in her chair and pulled her feet up to the edge of the seat, tucking the glass behind the wall of knees. "Too charming for your own good," she teased back, smiling weakly at him. She lifted the glass and tossed back the shot in one go, then twirled the glass around nervously in her fingers, unsure how to start. "You haven't been around much," she decided on, eyes on her hands' fidgeting.

Bobby pulled the glass in, but after only lifting it a few inches, set it right back down on his desk. Maybe Amanda was right, and he needed to keep his head fully aware if he was going to get through this. Instead he just moved his finger around his rim a few times before placing his hands right back in his lap, scooting back from the desk in his chair. "Well I think both of us can take a bit of the blame for that one." He new it was a bit of a shot, but neither of them had worked very hard to keep in contact while she was in Europe, and he was back in the States. It was both of their faults, but didn't change the fact that it was difficult to maintain a relationship when their was only one of you around.

Terry looked up at that. The shot hit true and stung. "I was n--" She scowled, biting back the rest of her retort. Placing blame was not going to solve things, and he was right. There was enough to go around. She dropped her feet and leaned forward to snag the bottle, refilling her drink before retreating back behind her knees. "I meant the past few days. Since I got in," she clarified, forcing an artificial evenness to her voice.

Drake thought about going for the drink again, but stopped himself after leaning forward just a bit. He rocked the chair backwards again, giving himself the illusion of space in the room once again. "To be honest Terry, it's been a bit jarring." He let out a bit of a nervous chuckle. "I mean, we're married, but we haven't even really talked for months. And then you show up without even giving me a phone call? I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the idea that you're here, and this isn't some kind of massive joke, or trick." He knew that he was coming forwards as angry. But honestly, it was more anger at himself, but he didn't know how to show that.

"That is why I am here, Bobby," Terry spat, then exhaled a harsh, hard breath, visibly reigning in her temper. "Why the bloody hell would I trick you on something like that?" She tossed back the contents of her glass again and slapped it against the corner of his desk. "We're not married though, are we? This is not a marriage. Has not even been a relationship." Hot tears made her eyes shiny, and she flushed hard under the effort of corralling the myriad of emotions playing through her. "Would you have even been here if I had called?" she asked quietly after a moment.

"I would have been at the door with flowers..." Bobby admitted. Even though things had apparently gotten very bad between the two of them, Bobby Drake would always care about her. He wasn't going to just give up on their relationship regardless of the result of the conversation. "We've obviously hurt each other a lot over the past few weeks, but in the end Terry, the lack of communication is still what hurts me." He finally looked up at her from the desk. "I mean, the fact that you thought I would run if you were coming, instead of staying her to have this conversation. What the hell have we become." He let the words catch in his throat. "I mean this is a conversation I should have been prepared for, not one that was sprung on me in a classroom by my wife who a few weeks ago, I thought was still in Europe, being a happy spy hunter..."

Terry seemed to shrink in on herself at his description of her theoretical welcome. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to herself. "I do not even know what conversation it is we are having," she said, the words muffled against her kneecaps, green eyes peeking over the top to look at him. "'m not happy though. Haven't been. How could I be, with half m'heart 'cross the ocean from me?"

Drake snorted a bit of a laugh. "And you think I've been all sunshine and peaches over here?" Bobby handled his tough feelings very differently than a lot of people. He wasn't going to go off an mope in his room. But he had thrown his life into his X-Men work, his school work, and his life at Harry's for that matter, much more than he would have otherwise. It was much better to think of something, like alcohol, than it was trying to convince himself that he wasn't going to think about Terry. "But I couldn't just stop living while I was over here."

"Sure, and was I saying I expected that? Did I say I did?" Terry sniffed, her accent thickening into a bog of sounds while she tipped her nose up in riled-temper infused pride. She dropped a foot to her floor and leaned forward with one arm still looped around the other knee. "I am here now, though. Surely that is saying something all on its own?"

Bobby ran his hand through the top of his hair. He leaned forward locking eyes with his wife. "But let me ask you this. If you hadn't been forced to come here on a case, would you have come back? Or would you still be in Europe?" It was a question that Bobby didn't know if he wanted to know the answer too. But all the same, it was the question that he needed to know the answer to.

Terry was quiet a moment, as if by ramping up the tension, she could underscore the sincerity of her answer. "I asked for the case, Bobby," she said simply. "I will probably be getting my arse handed to me for being on it at all. And I am not caring." Question answered, she reached across for the bottle again, splashing an unsteady third.

Drake felt his knee bouncing up and down anxiously for a second. He took notice of it consciously, as he let himself calm down a bit. At least enough to stop the bounce. But still, his stomach was tied in knots. "But what's going to happen after the case? Are you going to head right back over? And we'll start back on the same pattern again?" He really couldn't take that, but he wasn't going to let his response cloud his wife's.
"No." As a statement, it wasn't very informative, but it was emphatic. Terry tipped the bottle back upright and curled her fingers around her glass, then lifted it and drank it down. She always did drink like, well, like an irishman, but this still had an air of desperation about it. She put the glass down on the table carefully, and leaned onto her elbows. "No," she repeated, a bit quieter. "I'm requesting a transfer out o' Dublin. Seconding to the feebers here, maybe. Maybe leaving altogether. Have not figured that out yet. But, no," she said yet a third time, nearly crooning the negatory to her glass. "I am not wanting to go back."

Bobby swallowed again. She seemed to have all of the right answers so far, but there was still one other big question. Leaning against his elbows, he made the first movement since the beginning of their talk towards his wife. "And what does that mean for us?" He tilted his forehead forward. "What do you want out of our relationship if you do stay." He knew that he was sounding like an interrogator, and he knew that it was more than a loaded question, but it took the magnifying glass off of him personally.

Turnabout is fair play, in that case. Terry turned her face toward him and blinked at her. The edges of her lid were starting to turn red, between the alcohol and nervous tension of the conversation. "I want you?" she replied, like it was the most obvious answer in the world. She looked away again and pushed her glass from her with a harsh sigh. "I do not know how to be fixing us, Bobby. I do not know if we can. I just know I miss you."

Bobby dropped his entire face towards the ground, shaking it several times, and leaving it there before finally bringing himself to answer. "I miss you too." He pushed his chair back from the desk again after giving a bit of a pause. "I can't make you any promises Terry, and I don't know what's going on for either of us, but I can let you know that I've missed you for a lot longer than I've even said." He left the comment out there, like a small life saver in the middle of a dark ocean.
Terry's heart ached at the comment, and ached even more so that she had no idea how to answer it. She'd reached the end of the thought she had put into the conversation, reached the end of the scenarios she'd allowed herself to play out in her head. They always ended at the wall of Bobby's reaction, their estrangement so complete she no longer even pretended to herself to know what he might want. She gave him a bleak look, and nodded.

Drake cracked a smile for the first time since the whole conversation had started. "Well, then at the very least, I think we've mad an agreement that I'm not going to have to sleep on the couch every night for the next few months, right?"
Terry blinked again, his humor taking a moment to worm itself through the haze of whiskey and thoughts she had wrapped around herself. The corners of her mouth twitched up as she ventured a teasing, "There are more comfortable places to be spending the night, aye," then added, "I could be finding one of m' own, if that is what you would prefer."
It was late enough that avoiding the students was not too difficult as Terry made her way to Bobby's office, working off her memory to locate it. And avoiding students was probably a good thing when one was carrying a bottle of Jameson and a pair of shot glasses pinched between her thumb and index finger. She tucked the bottle under her arm and tried the door handle without knocking, then bumped the door in with her hip. She stood in the doorway and exhaled a short, sharp sigh as if bracing herself for the coming moments before she said, "So. I am thinking we should be having a moment.

Bobby quickly shook his head from side to side. "Naw." He forced a laugh from deep inside his belly. "If we're going to give this thing a shot, I want it to be a proper shot." He kicked the front of his desk to make a small sound. "Even if that means I'm going to have to put up with you being a cover hog again."
Terry bit her lower lip, then pushed up from her chair to lean across the corner of his desk toward him, planting her hands on the desktop for support. "Surely there are compensations for that?" she breathed in an attempt at innuendo that also had equal measures of shy and nervousness.

The math teacher leaned forward, but didn't go all the way towards Terry's lips. If she wanted her compensation, she was going to have to be the one to put in the last bit of effort. "You really expect me to pay for freezing my ass off in the middle of winter?" The irony of the statement didn't escape him.
It wasn't her compensation she was referring to. "No, twas not what I was thinking," the redhead said, some of her shyness leeching away in the midst of more familiar banter. She could lean no further without risking toppling face first into his lap, but maybe that wasn't necessarily a bad thing? "Bobby, m'love. How proper a shot are y' wanting from me?"

"Oh..." Was all Bobby could get out. "Well I..." His face suddenly flushed red, which wasn't easy to do with Drake, as he found himself leaning backwards in his chair again, a bit of shock on his face, as he had to cough to force any sound out of his mouth. "Let's take things a little bit slow at first..." He was still in a bit of a shocked feeling, but he was able to force a small smile in an attempt to lighten the mood for a little while, trying not to slam the door in Terry's face again. "After all, what kind of a date would I be if I just gave it up that easily?"
Terry's mouth was left hanging open as suddenly, there is no Bobby's face next to it. "Ah... I... Hum." That was not what she expected. She stammered, then snapped her mouth shut and pushed off the desk, straightening. "Oh." Her face was an open book in scarlet binding to her feelings: surprise, embarrassment, anger, understanding, hurt. She swallowed, eyed widening as she looked at him, then blew out a breath. "I... see. That is the kind of proper you are wanting, then." She lifted her hand to rake her hair away from her face, the other hand bracing on her hip. "Sure. Brilliant. A right proper date. I... uhm." Terry backed up toward the door, half-way turning as she edged toward it. "I think I should be moving to the guest rooms after all."

Bobby swallowed hard, but nodded his head forward. "If that's what you think is best." He flashed a bit of a smirk. "You never liked watching Bravo with me late at night anyways." He got up from the desk and slowly swung around the the front before dropping his voice to a whisper. "Oh and Terry..." He gave her a chance to respond. "This doesn't mean that I'm giving up."

"True. I always preferred to be doing something else with you late at night," Terry replied as she turned to reach for the door handle. The whisper pulled her attention back and she paused long enough to listen. "Me either," she answers with a nod before she opened the door and headed out, leaving the whiskey and glasses on his desk. She's going to regret that.