Garrison and Adrienne - First Date (The Second Time)

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Garrison and Adrienne end their date at Harry's and discuss Garrison's health and his suspension, as well as Adrienne's plans for the future. (And sports, of course.)They face some awkwardness at the end of the evening.


Garrison had picked a great little French hole-in-the-wall in the city for their date, remembering that Adrienne's favourite food was French, and after their meal they'd come back to Salem Center to catch a local band at Harry's. Because of the food, Adrienne was drinking wine rather than beer. She was having a great time, even though he was starting to seem a little nervous. Or maybe he just didn't like the band very much. "Too bad it's not Johnny tonight, huh?" Adrienne asked. "Or are you thinking that you'd rather have it be Justin Beiber, but how in just two sleeps you get to hear him perform at the half-time show of your lovely Fake Football Championship?"
 
"Don't be inpunging the Grey Cup. When the Super Bowl has been around for a century, then you can snark at it." Garrison replied in a typically banteringly way. It had been a good night so far, but also a little awkward. It was almost too easy to try and slip back into habits and modes from their previous relationship that weren't appropriate now. It wasn't helped by Kane's own issues since his fight with Thor and the resulting reconstruction of his mind. Some things he was now hesitant about; cautious, and required time to consider as opposed to having an answer immediately. 

"Impunging? What the hell? Is that a word? A real word? Did you just make that up? Can we just make up words now?" Adrienne asked, smirking. "That's impugnant! Besides, what makes you think I won't make fun of the Super Bowl when it's been around for a century? Football is annoying. Anything that isn't baseball is annoying. I doubt the Super Bowl will make it to one hundred. We'll probably be watching robots play the game by then, if anything."

Kane glossed over the jibe. He still had side effects from the mental surgery; gaps or even different information where it shouldn't be. Ten minutes of word salad was mercifully unnoticed in the den since no one had been around. Jean had said it should get better, but there were no certainties with the brain. "No, if we're lucky, the CFL will be up to twelve teams by then and be watching the Grey Cup in Halifax. That will be exciting."

"Oh joy! Oh rapture! Grey Cup in Halifax! I don't know how I'll survive until that day comes!" Adrienne snickered, fake swooning. "Seriously? You don't even have 12 teams in this league and it's been around for one hundred years? How many teams are there? Also, what's exciting about Halifax? Fish? Boats?" She didn't know anything else about Halifax.
 
"Rum. Cape Breton girls. Good seafood. I quite like Halifax, It's like what Boston would have been if civilization had broken out."

Adrienne simultaneously flipped him off and stuck her tongue out at him for the Boston comment, because she was classy like that. Which probably just proved his point about civilization in Boston. Oh well. "Seafood might be enough to pique my interest. Not much of a rum person, though. And what's so special about Cape Breton girls?"
 
"They all have cute freckles, drink like longshoremen, and have no morals in bed. It's like Adult Disneyland." He joked.  

Adrienne gave this some serious thought. "I drink like a longshoreman and have no morals in bed. And I have adorable freckles." She just used concealer on hers most of the time. "Maybe I'm really adopted and my birth parents are from Cape Breton. That would be fun, an identity crisis at... my age."
 
"At your age? You're not exactly over the hill yet, Adri." 

"I don't plan on ever scaling that hill," she shrugged, smirking a little. "Now that I have money again I'm working on a top secret serum to defy aging. And I suppose I can't really entertain the thought that I might be adopted. I'm every inch a Frost, whether I want to be or not." She set her empty wine glass on the edge of the table, knowing it would soon be whisked away and refilled. "So how is it having your powers back?" she asked, since they hadn't really talked much about his recovery, and Adrienne very much wanted to be available to him if he needed to talk. "That's gotta be nice, having that affirmation that you're on the road to recovery, huh?"
 
"I don't know if it's as much about recovery as it is about feeling like me in my own skin again. I manifested at fifteen, and it's been so long since, not having my power active feels like missing a limb." Kane confirmed. "Not bad, but always off, like phantom feeling or something. I don't know. Still finding my feet a bit."  

Adrienne nodded. "I felt like that in Genosha. I don't think I ever even realized just how used to my powers I'd gotten in the twenty-or-so years I've had them until they were gone. Everything about me felt skewed a little." She rubbed at her hands, recalling all too well how they'd felt cold without her powers. "And my powers just affect my hands and my head, so I can't contemplate what it felt like to lose powers like yours, that affect your whole body." Uncharacteristically, since she still wasn't much of a toucher, she reached out and took his hand, squeezing it. "You'll get back on your feet. You always do."
 
"I appreciate the vote of confidence. I just-" Garrison folded his hands and leaned on the table, chin resting against them. "Ever since Aitkins and your sister and the others had to put my mind back together, I'm coming to the realization that I'm not who I was. Not hugely different on the surface, but whatever they did to bring me back also blew up a lot of certainties. You know, like when there's something that you believe, and the reasons were formed for that belief so long ago that you can't even remember? It's things like that which are just, well, gone. So every reaction I find I'm questioning."  

"That sounds awful," Adrienne sympathized. "Do you think you'll ever be able to get those... pathways... if that's the term for what they were... back? Were they blown up permanently? Do you have to re-form them all?"
 
"I talked to the Doc about it. Essentially, they reform on their own, but they'll reform based on my experiences and feelings now, not from my past. So questioning everything is kind of par for the course. Maybe that's not all bad." Kane proposed. "I have a degree in psychology. I studies how far down our personal definitions and prejudices can reach. Maybe I get a chance to re-examine who I was and compare it to who I want to be." 

Thinking this over as her new glass of wine was brought to the booth, Adrienne made an Impressed face and smiled. "Yeah, that might not be bad, when you think about it. Some people might consider you lucky... not many of us get a chance to re-evaluate who we are and re-form ourselves based on who we want to be." Adrienne wasn't really one of those people who wanted to re-do their life, though. "Can you work really hard on wanting to be a Sox fan instead of a Jays fan, d'ya'think?" she suggested.
 
"Not even for sex starved triplets of you. Some things are worth questioning, and some things remain fundamentally obscene." He riposted immediately, a half smile tugging the left side of his face.  

Adrienne stuck her tongue out at him again. "You mean like your team's budget is going to be next year? Most expensive DL in the league?"

"I was thinking more the first time at Fenway, when Lester finds himself down four nothing in the first with no one out and has no clue what just happened." He took a sip from his wine glass and swirled the liquid inside. " You're just jealous because your owner is nearly bankrupt." 

"Fuck yeah I am," Adrienne answered good-naturedly. "Maybe if they didn't go around buying stupid shitty soccer teams that aren't even in this damn country, they could field a proper fucking baseball team. Of course, that still doesn't change the fact that your training staff needs to be replaced before you have another season like last year. You can buy all the talent you want, but if you can't keep them healthy, what's the point?"
 
"Simply a run of bad luck. Although, that reminds me, did you end up keeping your box at Fenway?" 

"I did," Adrienne nodded. "Sale of 64Square will be finalized on Monday, but yeah, I already insisted I was keeping the box." She rubbed her hands together greedily. "Monday, April 8th, home opener against Baltimore. Already counting the sleeps. There are 136 sleeps, in case you were wondering." She then feigned confusion. "Wait, you didn't know I kept the box? You mean, that wasn't why you wanted to start going out again?"

"Yes. Because I am so enthralled with the idea of watching games surrounded by legions of Massholes that it's worth dating you for the privilege. No, wait, I'm actually dating you so I can get close to your sister, as if she didn't completely fucking terrify me." Kane's dry, sardonic delivery came with a completely straight face. "So, Fred told me just how much you ended up losing to the federal government in your deal. Now selling the business - you going to come out of it alright?" 

Snickering over his Emma comment, Adrienne sipped at her wine again. "Do you mean like, materially? Or emotionally? Although I suppose the answer would be 'yes' regardless," she added thoughtfully. "Yeah, I'm not going to be retiring to go live in Fiji anytime soon, but I'm going to be able to pay off the Guild contract and make a nice little investment in the District X clothing shop. Put some into other investments, spread the money out a little. And emotionally..." She fiddled with the stem of her wineglass a little, "it's obviously not my first choice of outcomes, since so much of my life had been devoted to that company, but I don't regret it. And to quote you, maybe it's not all bad. When I'm feeling particularly self-deprecating, I realize that I actually have nearly a whole lifetime of fucked-up personal history tied into modelling and that company." She'd begun modelling internationally to get away from her father, after all. And a part of her would always wonder if the success of the company she'd built had contributed to Steven's insecurity and his subsequent abuse. "So, despite how sappy this sounds, I'm mostly looking forward to leaving that all behind me and maybe starting something brand new someday, based on who I am now."
 
"And what's that going to be, you think? Any ideas?" Kane could understand leaving behind the baggage of the past. He occasionally wondered if Adrienne had ever willingly left her old life; it might have been tempestuous, drug fueled and occasionally dangerous, but at the same time, it was made up of parties and foreign capitals and mixing with society's elites. Not unlike the Hellfire Club. Was there still a part of her that wanted that life back at times? 

"Not a one," Adrienne admitted with a smile. That wasn't entirely true, as she always had an idea or two rattling around in her head, but nothing particularly interesting or substantial was taking up residence there at the moment. "I don't feel any pressing desire to go leave my mark on the business world right now. I guess it goes back to the 'wants' versus 'needs' conversation we had at that charity ball a few weeks back," she murmured thoughtfully. "I don't need that life anymore, and as of right now, I don't even want it anymore. Maybe I'll want it again someday, but maybe not. And even if I do wake up one day and decide I want to start a business again, I know it's not going to be like the first one, because that's not who I am anymore. Did I tell you: Wyngarde gave me a chance to become his Black Queen in London? It made me ill to think about it," she told him with a wrinkle of her nose. "For the time being, I'm all about teaching and working at the shop, helping people pick out clothes that make them happy. You know me," she chuckled, "I'm more of a here-and-now person, so all I know is I'm pretty content with the here-and-now." She paused to clap for the band as they completed their set, then took another sip of wine. "Any news on your suspension?" she inquired curiously.
 
"Not yet. I'm supposed to get a head's up from Fred next week, but I've heard it's not looking good." Adrienne could have been Black Queen? Wasn't that the goal she'd been after the first time? And with Shaw's companies, she would have jumped to being one of the most prominent businesswomen in the country, far ahead of her sister. That was interesting. "Date two might have to happen at the local jail." 

She punched him in the shoulder. "Optimism!" she ordered playfully. "Actually, you know they have restaurants in jails in England now, right? Plastic cutlery, food cooked by convicts, you eat in the middle of the cells area so you're surrounded by people in cages just staring at you. Like eating in a zoo, I'd imagine. But apparently it's quite delicious. Maybe for my new business venture I'll get a restaurant started in your prison. You can be my head chef." She polished off the rest of her wine and turned back to him with a more serious look on her face. "You're not going to go to jail. I don't care how Fred thinks it's looking. I have precognition on my side, and I have faith in you." Normally she wouldn't broadcast precognitive readings, for fear of altering an outcome because of the very vocalization of it, but since the outcome was out of Garrison's hands, and she highly doubted he'd run around screaming to the FBI that the chick he was dating had foreseen that he wouldn't go to jail, she figured she'd tell him, hoping it would set his mind at ease a little.
 
"I appreciate the vote of confidence, but your powers aren't necessarily a hundred percent, Adrienne. What happens will happen." He did appreciate the attempt, but this was something that he couldn't shrug off easily, especially considering that they could be right to charge him. 

Adrienne punched him in the shoulder and barked "optimism!" at him again, then took his hand and squeezed it again. "Fine, what happens will happen. We'll deal with it. Christ knows we've dealt with shitty situations before. It just sort of pisses me off that you helped me out of my... situation... all those years ago, but now I can't help you with yours."
 
Kane gave her a smile. "We have, haven't we? You're right. We'll deal with it when it happens." He laid his hand over hers, as they turned back to the band.
 
***
 
"So, I had a great night tonight." They were standing out in front of Adrienne's room door, after taking a cab home from Harry's. 

"As did I," Adrienne smiled, wondering why he wasn't kissing her. Apparently he really didn't want to jump back to how they were before, because they were just standing here all awkward-like.

"OK. So, um-" Kane rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, uh, so we'll go out again? Maybe Monday. If you're free?" 

Adrienne nodded, still smiling. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I'm free. I'd like that. Maybe go check out that new horror movie that just came out?" She loved horror movies.

"Yeah, whatever you want." He agreed, nodding. "So, I guess, well-"

"-Yeah?" Adrienne asked hopefully.

"Well, you know..." 

They'd be standing here all night if they kept this up. "Oh, for the love of-" Adrienne stepped forward, grabbed him by the coat lapels, and fused her mouth to his.
 
Garrison didn't resist, kissing her back fiercely. There was a long moment, with months of separation baked into it, before they both finally came up for air. Kane had started to straighten up, but her grip on his jacket didn't budge, as she walked backward into her suite, pulling him along.
 
"So, did you really not wear any under-" The door closed behind them.