Jean and Adrienne: Liquid Therapy (Backdated)

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Adrienne tries to convince Jean to come out drinking with her to forget her troubles.


Adrienne was dressed to the nines in a little black dress and black heels with plenty of jewelry and a fancy updo when she knocked on Jean's suite door, already dancing to music that only existed in her head. "Doctor Lush!" she called out in a singsongy voice. "Come out with me tonight! I saw the Danger Room and the sign and despite what some students and family members think, I'm not that stupid. If you're pissed about the sign you need to come ouuuuuuut. We'll get drunk and see how long we can dance on top of a bar somewhere!"

After a few moments the door opened. Jean was still wearing her work clothes: a simple black button down blouse and a pair of nice dress slacks, her hair up in a sloppy braid that left her bangs hanging down in front of her eyes. She appeared decidedly cloudy as she leaned against the door frame.

"I'm not just mad at the sign. I'm mad at the immature man-child who created it."

"Well, c'mon," Adrienne replied, beckoning with a wide gesture for Jean to come out of the suite. "You can tell Mama Adrienne and the nice Mrs. Shiraz all about it while we search for something to do that'll make people call the FBI so Kane has to come arrest us. Cuz that'd be fuuuuuuun."

"Tempting," Jean allowed with a indulgent lift of her chin. "Tell me more."

Adrienne narrowed her eyebrows in thought. "Welllllllll... first we'll go to a bar in the city where no one knows us. I will call my old friend Driver and hire him for the evening. You and I will drink lots and lots of wine and then Driver will take us to different bars and we will do several things and try to see how many of them we can do in each bar before we get kicked out. I don't have the whole list yet," she admitted, "but a couple of the things on it include dancing on the bar, dancing on stage with the band, playing Free Drink Bingo, trying to incite fights between people for the stupidest reason, and the ever-popular 'one of us distracts the valet while the other grabs keys and tries to see if they can get into the car the keys are for before the valet notices. If he doesn't notice, we drive the car around the block.' And then, y'know, we see where the night takes us from those warm-up acts."

After a few moments of listening Jean finally smiled contemplatively. "Perhaps," she said with a slow nod. "As long as we don't make the news. I still have a reputation to uphold on Capitol Hill...and spending the night in jail might not look good for my image."

"That's what the G-Man is for," Adrienne assured her friend with a smirk. "He never lets me spend the night in jail. Or make the news. He won't start now. So come onnnnnnnn! Night's a wastin'! Let's move, move, move!"

"It's easy to say when you're dating him," Jean mused, then sighed in acquiescence. "Alright...let me get changed."

Adrienne followed Jean inside and flopped down on her bed on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows with her chin in her hands, legs waving in the air. "He wouldn't leave you in jail or leave you to the media, either," she commented. "He likes you a lot, y'know. Either that or he's afraid of you," she added with a confused look, "I can't really tell." She winked so Jean would know she was kidding, except she wasn't checking to see if Jean was looking at her, since she was staring at the clothes in Jean's closet. "Ooo, shiny," she mumbled distractedly.

"Probably a little bit of both," Jean said as she reached past her to grab something sparkly and short for the night ahead. Since befriending Adrienne her wardrobe had changed somewhat when it came to evening attire. She had a lot of casual and extremely formal office attire that was also joined by a few glam, glitzy pieces that only looked best in a late night bar.

"What do you think of this one?" she said, holding up a red dress that shimmered gold in the light.

"Oooooo. Preeeeetty," Adrienne gushed approvingly. "But is that a tag I see on it? You haven't even worn it yet?! Not even for Scott around the suite?" Or maybe her eyes were just failing her. She had been squinting a lot lately.

Jean shook her head. "I just bought it a couple of days ago. It was on sale," she said.

"I'm worried it might be little too short, though. Most things that are okay for regular people wind up being too short for me."

"Oh, boo freaking hoo, Ms. Legs-Up-To-Her-Chin," Adrienne teased, rolling her eyes. "There's no such thing as too short. Until you're dead. Because you don't want people viewing your dead body and looking up your skirt. But other than that, there's no such thing as too short! Embrace the legs! Be proud of the legs! What are you going to do tonight?" she questioned, eyes widening in anticipation of the response she wanted, mouthing 'embrace the legs; be proud of the legs' as she waited for a response.

"I have embraced the legs, thank you," Jean said, holding up the dress appraisingly. "I just prefer not having to wade through a sea of dirty thoughts when we go out, even with the mental shielding."

"Hmm, good point," Adrienne muttered thoughtfully. "Okay. New question. How drunk do we have to get you before everyone else's thoughts become a blur or a hum or something?"

"Drinking makes it worse," Jean said. She hadn't really told many people about that. "Mucks with my control. I usually just cease to care."

"Did I just hear 'cease to care?'" Adrienne asked, cupping a hand around her ear. "Judges will accept 'cease to care' as an answer, yes! Let's run with 'cease to care!' Now c'mon, strip before I have to strip you," she coaxed with a grin. "Unless you want me to do that. But I promised Gar if that ever happened I'd take video of it and I can't find my phone, so..."

Jean quirked a brow. "How much alcohol have you already had? You seem a bit....saucier than usual."

The brunette considered lying, but since she wasn't working to shield her thoughts she figured Jean would figure it out anyway, so after pausing for a beat gave Jean Shifty Eyes and 'fessed up. "I might have made Mr. Johnnie Walker go bye-bye all empty. But I'm very good at holding my liquor," she added with a vehement nod.

Resting her hand on her hip, Jean smirked. "Mmmhmm," she said. "Early start, I see. I'll be right back."

She disappeared into the bathroom. "Where did you want to go?"

"Aww, no fair!" she called out when Jean went into the bathroom to change. "And hey, don't judge me for the early start. The Jays are leading the AL East and Boston's in the toilet. I have good reason to drink. But tonight's not about me. It's about you. You and your destruction of the Danger Room and the immature man-child that made a sign. Don't think I forgot about that, missy." She jabbed a finger towards the bathroom door to emphasize her point, rolling over onto her back and staring at the ceiling. "So, what? Did you suffer a head injury or a Mansion demon curse or something that caused you to forget that Wade Wilson's always had the maturity level of a thirteen year-old?"

Jean went silent for a few moments, and finally came out, her thoughtful expression downplaying the impact of her wearing the dress.

"I told him how I felt, he didn't care. Yes, he's immature but he doesn't normally act that way all the time. Making fun of Scott and me, by extension, was a sore spot."

After wolf-whistling Adrienne tried to focus on the topic they'd gotten into. "He didn't care? That bites," she agreed. "I mean, I've never heard him say he cared about people's feelings before, but usually he tries to buy something to make up for it, y'know? Did he not give you a car or something?"

"Which implies that he cares....and he doesn't. Says I should know when to laugh about things. Said Scott wasn't bothered but I know he is....He wouldn't just tell a guy he doesn't know that well that he's bothered."

Adrienne bit her lip in thought. "I'm probably the most wrong person to talk to about this, what with being the abused chick, but... is this maybe one of those things where... maybe if Scott's bothered he should tell Wade himself instead of you doing it? I dunno," she added, throwing her hands up defensively. "That's just what I'd do. But then, like I said. Abused chick. I don't tend to fight anyone else's battles for them. Rarely even my own. So you probably did what you were supposed to do. Just forget I said it." She was definitely regretting the Johnnie Walker now, as her stomach was flipping and flopping all over the place.

Jean laid back on the bed. "He wouldn't. He pretends like nothing's wrong," she said, then sighed. "Let's just drink. I'd rather not think about it anymore."

Since it didn't involve her, Adrienne shrugged the conversation away and pulled the Shiraz bottle out of her purse. "Fair enough." She was here to take Jean's mind off of what was bugging her, not force her to justify her response and dwell on it. "I think you might have to sit up if you wanna drink, though?" And yet she laid back on the bed next to Jean, waving the bottle back and forth over her face to tempt her to get up and take a drink. "If I were to drop this right now, could you TK it from hitting you in the face?" she inquired curiously.

"Probably," Jean said, covering her face with a pillow. Her mood went back to sour the more she thought about Wade and his smirky face.

Finally she pulled the pillow away. "Let's go...otherwise I'm going to want to go to the DR again."

She didn't know why she was this mad, she knew Wade wasn't exactly the poster child for serious, mature conversation and she shouldn't have taken a cheap shot at him, but sometimes it was hard to put the fire out once it'd been lit.

Since Jean covered her face with a pillow, Adrienne found her declaration about catching the bottle to be suspect, but she figured that also meant she shouldn't try it. Definitely better to stay on Jean's good side. For self-preservation. "No! No DR. The world is your DR tonight, lady." Her friend still seemed pretty grouchy, which made Adrienne uncomfortable, but she swung her feet over the bed as the first step to getting up. "You don't seem like you've stopped thinking about it?" she prodded cautiously. "Turn it off. C'mon. Otherwise I'll start to get worried about the fact that you seem preoccupied with Wade Wilson, and then I'll have to start wondering if you've got an itch for him or something."

Jean curled her nose. "Ugh! God no. It's hard to turn your thoughts on command. If I could I'd have done it already," she said. And she'd tried, with disastrous results.

"Okay..." She climbed off the bed, extending her arm. "Wade Wilson is completely stricken from our vocabularies for the rest of the night. Distract me. Quickly."

"But now I'm all curious about Wa... ugh, fine," Adrienne pouted. "No more vocabulary about men in general." She dug into her purse with one arm as she used the other to help pull Jean to her feet. "Here's your Free Drink Bingo card," she announced, giving Jean a 4x6 card-stock piece of paper with a bingo grid on it and phrases like 'backwards hat guy', 'cowboy boots guy', 'sexy tattoo sleeves woman' on it.

"Tututut!" Jean said, putting her hand up to silence her. The look on Jean's face was amusingly perplexed as she held up the card. "This...would definitely be distracting," she said with a smirk.

Adrienne nodded her satisfaction. "Good! That's the point, after all. Now come on! Driver's waiting! Have you met Driver before?" she asked with narrowed eyes, unable to remember whether Jean knew the man or not. It had been a long time since Adrienne had seen him, after all. He had a new boss now, but she'd been able to hire him for some extra work for old times' sake.

"Not that I know of," Jean said. She tilted her head. "Is his name really Driver and he's a driver?"

"Driver is his title," Adrienne shrugged. "I don't know his real name. He only worked for me for seven years," she deadpanned.

"I was going for ironic if it was his real name and his job," Jean said with a smirk.

"Yeah, that would have been cool. Well, I mean, maybe it is cool," Adrienne shrugged. "Cuz that may actually be his name. Why don't you ask him when you meet him in like
two minutes?" she suggested, putting an arm around Jean to guide her down the hall towards the front doors.

"Mmmhmm," Jean said, suddenly feeling somewhat conscious of how short her dress was but it was already too late.

Adrienne noticed Jean tensing up and narrowed her eyes at her. "You look amazing. Don't wuss out on me now. Self-confidence, lady! What is the phrase of the night?"

"Drink until things are blurry?"

"Hmm. Well, that works as a phrase too. But no, it's embrace the legs! Embrace. The. Legs," Adrienne repeated, poking Jean in the hip with each word.

"Ow! Ow," Jean said, swatting at her. "Got it...legs good...crush men with thighs."

Adrienne threaded her arm in Jean's and did a little skip step as they headed out to the car and the waiting Driver. "That's the spirit!"