We can't have a Frost suffering Pyjama Deprivation Syndrome

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Emma takes Adrienne home with her after the plane lands and provides some much-welcome safety and comfort.


Adrienne stared out at Emma's car as the Frost Enterprises jet cut its engines and opened its doors on the tarmac of the airfield, but she was looking at it without actually seeing, without really thinking anything at all. Completely and utterly drained of energy and emotion, her mind was blank. She hadn't been able to sleep on the ride back due to restlessness, but now she wasn't even feeling that. She wasn't feeling anything. 

Everyone was getting off the plane. But Adrienne just kept sitting, like she didn't know how to leave.
  
Emma had waited until everyone else had left the plane, expecting her sister to make some kind of move to leave. Adrienne didn't move at all, though, and finally Emma rose from her seat and made her way to Adrienne's side. 
  
She looked down at Adrienne's un-moving face, blindly staring out the window and obviously seeing nothing outside the plane. Warmth rushed through Emma and she crouched down beside her sister, her hand settling gently on the back of Adrienne's where it lay limply on the arm-rest. "Adrienne?" she said, softly. "Little sister. We're home now. It's time to take you home."
  
Adrienne flinched at the touch of Emma's hand, a flood of images from the kidnapping and her time in the prison going through her head, but she blinked into focus on Emma's face and gave a wry, apologetic chuckle. "Sorry. Home? Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry." Her face screwed up suddenly, just for a moment. "Em? I... I don't want to go home." She'd been thinking about it for a while now, she supposed. It was actually the last thing she remembered thinking before shutting down completely. "I don't want to go back there, where all those kids are," she admitted. "They got hurt because of me. I wanted to go back there so bad, because it had become my home, and you helped me get back because I wanted to be there, but now... I never should have come back. I should have stayed in Boston, away from all of this." Her tone was level, unemotional. She'd thought about all of this on the plane, wrestled with the irony of it all, and knew she needed to keep the emotions at bay like she'd done before. Now she stared at the floor instead of the car to fight them off.
  
"I like the way you say that like I'm going to let you out of my sight," replied Emma, dryly. She wasn't going to touch on any of the other matters for now; they were all too raw and Emma had long ago discarded the theory that people needed to talk trauma out right after they experienced it. What they needed was time, and hot showers, and warm clothes and tea or whiskey, depending on their point of view, and someone to be there with them, and Emma was determined to provide all of those things to Adrienne. "You're coming to my apartment. With me. No kids. No Xavier. No team de-briefs. Just me and as much cognac as you care to inhale." Emma closed her eyes for a moment and then reached out a hand that only iron will kept from trembling and smoothed a strand of hair from Adrienne's forehead. 
   
The younger Frost's face lit up at Emma's statement (it didn't seem like an offer so much as a statement.) "Can I have pyjamas?" she asked, realizing she sounded like a three year-old but not really caring at that moment. "The worst part about being kidnapped and imprisoned and busting out to go on the lam is not having pyjamas. I didn't even know I liked pyjamas that much, but sleeping in the same clothes you're imprisoned and then killing people in, day after day? It's gross. When I get my company back I'm gonna make nothing but pyjamas. And shoes." And now the rambling had started. Emma was probably going to regret taking Adrienne with her, but that was part of the fun of being siblings, right?
  
"That's very fifties of you," said Emma, raising an eyebrow. "Shoes with pyjamas. Little kitten heel mules with fluffy pom-poms on the front, I would imagine? I can supply both if you really want. Though I have to confess my colour range with pyjamas is limited. Will white silk pyjamas do? I can send out for others if you really want. Purple flannelette with dinosaurs on them? Or some kind of baseball themed outfit? I'm sure they're all achievable, if that's what you want." She smiled suddenly, happy to have some of the usual Adrienne back. "We can't have a Frost suffering Pyjama Deprivation Syndrome."
  
"Shoes with pyjamas!" Adrienne suddenly wasn't too tired not to laugh at the mental image all of this was prompting- first the shoes with pyjamas, then the dinosaur and baseball pyjamas. And then she was laughing a lot. She followed Emma off the plane and to the car, giggling like a madwoman. "White silk sounds fantastic, even if I'll be swimming in them," she pointed out with a wicked grin when she'd gotten all the giddy laughter out. When she sunk into the plush leather seats of Emma's car, another wave of exhaustion hit her. "You really should keep a baseball themed outfit on hand, you know," she muttered, giving Emma a knowing Look. "Baseball players are big and strong and they're really good at handling their balls. And wood. And something about stroking I can't quite connect into a better innuendo right now. You could have fun with that fantasy, though, I bet. If you had an outfit on hand. 'Course, you could just get a real baseball player to sleep with you, probably. You should do that!" Suddenly it seemed like the best idea in the world to Adrienne. "Seduce a baseball player! Then steal his uniform so you can keep his outfit on hand. Then give it to me! You should seduce Jacoby Ellsbury for me! That's what a good sister would do. Not that you're not already the best sister, but, y'know. Jacoby Ellsbury."
  
Emma looked across at her sister with a certain fond exasperation. “You do know that I don’t have the slightest clue what you are talking about, don’t you? And couldn’t you seduce your own baseball player if you want a uniform that badly? I can’t imagine it would be that difficult. There are some fairly tedious conversational interludes in my past that indicate that I’ve slept with a number of professional sportspeople and I don’t recall any of them presenting any kind of challenge. Or being particularly innovative.” She patted her sister’s hand lightly again.  “I’m also inclined to think that neither of us in a fit state to seduce anyone this evening. Falling asleep during the act always seems rather gauche.”
  
"I could, but it's funnier to me if you seduce a baseball player," Adrienne murmured with a good-natured shrug. "But yeah, not tonight. Tonight is for cognac and pyjamas." She took the hand that was patting hers and squeezed it. "Thanks for this. Watch out, though, I might end up getting used to it, and never leave. You'll have to distract me with a trail of designer shoes to get me out of your place and then lock the door behind me." She looked down at her feet, encased in cheap flip-flops from whatever Genosha called Wal-Mart. Possibly Wal-Mart. "Maybe they don't have to be designer, though. These are actually pretty comfy. They beat the ones on that horrible suit they made us wear, that's for sure."
 
“I suspect that prison suits aren’t designed for comfort,” replied Emma. “Though, as a warning, if you ever take to wearing Crocs, I am disowning you.” She squeezed Adrienne’s hand back. “As for not wanting to leave – if you keep getting kidnapped, it’s entirely possible that I’ll put you in a silver cage and not let you out at all. And I already have the silver cage, so don’t tempt me.”
 
"Fair enough," Adrienne laughed, smirking, "on the Crocs and the kidnapping."The car had reached Emma's place and Adrienne followed her out of the vehicle. "I'm most certainly never going to a protest rally ever again, I can tell you that right now. Maybe I'll just never leave bed. Ever. Bed's safe. Not Genosha beds, though. I couldn't sleep in that hotel at all, I just wandered around all night and watched pay-per-view."

"Perhaps a shower first," said Emma gently. "I don't want to insult you or anything, but it was a really long flight."

*****

Emma felt like she should be luxuriating in her bed. After what had been far too long in something laughingly described as a tent on something laughingly described as a camp "bed", sleeping in her own bed should have felt like the most glorious luxury. But, exhausted as she was and with Adrienne safely ensconced in the guest bed, still Emma found herself tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

There was a knock at her door.

Adrienne couldn't sleep either. Emma's bed was niiiiiiiiice, nicer than her bed at the mansion, and it beat the crap out of a prison cell or sleeping in the camp with the Prenova rebels. It wasn't an issue of luxury. She was still having trouble feeling safe. It still felt like at any moment they might come back, haul her back to prison.

Unlike in Genosha when she'd just gone walking, gone for runs, used the pool or just watched tv with Vanessa to avoid being confronted with the gnawing fear of being taken away again, Adrienne knew exactly how she was gonna feel safe here.

"Em?" she called out to accompany the knock. "Are you awake? I can't sleep. Can I come in?" Just like when they were kids, and their father had been abusing their mother in some fashion terrifying to Adrienne. She'd go to Emma's room and Emma would make her feel safe.

Apparently, unbeknownst to herself, the knock was what she’d been waiting for, because Emma found that her body suddenly drained of a tension she hadn’t even been aware of. ~Of course,~ she sent out to Adrienne. ~Come in.~ She sat up and turned on the bedside light at the door opened.

"Thanks," Adrienne smiled. "Can I...?" she gestured to Emma's bed, but couldn't quite bring herself to say something akin to 'can I crawl into bed with you so I can feel safe?' Except since she'd just thought of it, Emma now knew anyway. "It's childish, I know," she added aloud, sounding apologetic, "but I..." ~need my big sister to keep the monsters away again.~

Wordlessly, Emma turned back the covers and moved over in the bed, to allow Adrienne space to scoot in beside her.
 
Gratefully, Adrienne sank into the bed. It wasn't cold and starchy like the guest bed, the sheets having that unfamiliar-laundry-detergent quality hotel rooms always had. Emma's bed was warm and smelled like Emma, and as a result Adrienne felt herself relaxing immediately.
 
Emma turned over and wrapped her sister in a spoon hug, not too tightly as she felt Adrienne rapidly tipping towards the sleep of the utterly exhausted. She reached out with her mind and the touch of her telepathy was nothing but warmth and reassurance and love, a gentle soothing of fears. ~Go to sleep, Adrienne,~ she sent gently. ~Emma’s here. And I promise to keep the monsters away. I’m much scarier than they are anyway.~ The last sensation in Adrienne’s mind as she fell into deep sleep was the faintest of laughter and then Emma followed her sister into the black peace of sleep.