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xp_logsWarren returns to the Mansion, tries to win Adrienne back over with illegal substances, and somehow ends up having an actual adult conversation.
Adrienne hadn't heard anyone leave anything at the suite door but, as she tackled some Meridian paperwork while lounging on the couch, began to notice that Garrison's creepy cat was parked in front of the door, trying to shove its paw underneath. She thought nothing of it at first, figuring the cat would get bored and leave shortly afterwards. But it didn't.
Finally she got up, tossing away the blanket that she'd thrown over her yoga pants and tank top, and padded over to the door, shooing the cat away and opening it. A box with a handwritten note on top of it was sitting in front of the door. Frowning, Adrienne picked it up and carried it inside, placing it on the kitchen counter. The cat jumped up beside her and she shoved it off. "Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's not for you," she told it in the usual annoyed tone she adopted with the cat, taking the note off the box.
"Special brownies. Not for children. Double-you," she read out loud. "Wade or Warren?" She put her hand on the box to Read it and confirmed that it was Warren who'd delivered it. "Special brownies?" she said to the cat, who made a noncommittal cat noise in response. Adrienne sighed, picked up the box, slipped some sandals on, and went over to Warren's suite.
"Frat boy, what the hell?" she called out as she knocked on his door.
First day back to the mansion, and already he'd pissed someone off. That had to be a new record for him. Sighing, Warren walked to the door and opened it.
"Have you never heard of apology brownies? Are you on a diet? If so, sorry. I can make you an apology smoothie, but that doesn't have the same ring to it."
Adrienne gave him what she was sure was now her Why-do-you-have-to-be-so-Warren? Look and handed him the box back. She wasn't actually angry, since he didn't know she was in recovery. But she still wasn't going to act like she was pleased that he'd given her an apology anything. "Maybe apology smoothie doesn't have the same ring, but I'm assuming it also doesn't have mind-altering drugs in it, either?" She really kinda wanted a smoothie now.
"Well, no. But that's because I haven't made it yet." Duh. Taking the box back, he walked towards his little kitchen and placed it on the counter. Someone else would enjoy it. "Although," he continued, "your tone suggests you aren't open to that. Drugs, that is. I don't know anyone who would turn down a smoothie."
This was where things got tricky. Adrienne had done a lot of self-searching since being dumped in this universe. And not in an existential kind of way, but in a literal one. So she knew that in this universe, Adrienne Frost was still a drug user. Adrienne could find no indications that the version of her in this universe had ever attended a support meeting. She had found evidence in her own financials that she'd been to rehab three times in her life- at nineteen, then again at twenty and then at twenty-two. But monthly payments to a person her powers had confirmed was a dealer had started when she'd moved to New York from Boston several years before and continued regularly until this January, when the universe had gone to shit. Judging by the amount paid, she wasn't a junkie, but extrapolated that the version of herself that belonged in this universe had been doing multiple bumps per week.
In actuality she had been sober for over fifteen years. But Warren didn't know that.
"I'm on the wagon. Six months," she said instead, making a mental note to replace the fifteen-year chip she carried around- which was a couple years old now, anyway- with a six-month chip. And, shit. Maybe she should give up drinking around the frankenberrycat people, too. Damn.
His mouth formed an O. That was quite possibly the last thing he expected to hear. As much as he dabbled in all sorts of illegal substances, he was quite confident that he could walk away from it all if he wanted to.
That being said,it was probably a severe case of 'not gonna happen to me-itis'.
"Congratulations. I apologize for my tasteless present then. Now I have to find something else to show you I really am sorry. I've spent a lot of time on the naughty stool and I have come to see that I behaved poorly."
"I don't think giving me things is really going to show me you're sorry," Adrienne responded pointedly, though she tried to keep the derision out of her voice, appreciating that at least, in his own way, he was trying to make things better. "I'd rather just talk to you about it."
Warren tried his best not to shudder. Another lecture. Great. Clearing his throat, he leaned back on a counter and gave a nod. "Alright. Let's have it."
"Wait, what? Me?" Adrienne shook her head, leaning against his kitchen counter. "No, I meant you talk to me. Despite how you act, Worthington," she informed him, "you're not a child, and I'm not your mother, or your headmistress. I said my piece at the office that night. You know how I feel. I'm not going to keep lecturing you about it. If you want me to understand that you're sorry, talk to me about it. What made you come to see that you behaved poorly? How is it that you were completely oblivious to how you behaved that night, but can now see the error of your ways?"
Fuck it. Honesty would work better. "I put the company in an awkward position by not adhering to the policies and principles that we try to honour. You are absolutely right -- the liability was astounding and if something worse had happened, it would have greatly impacted the integrity of the company. As a businessman myself, I can't believe that I allowed my personal beliefs to come ahead of the company." He straightened his tie and brushed off a wrinkle before looking at her again. "I was treating XFI as my own personal pet project and that was inexcusable."
Adrienne nodded solemnly. "Indeed." She lifted herself up onto the counter, legs dangling idly. "You wanna talk to me about your personal beliefs? The reason you did it in the first place?" She was still having trouble understanding that part. What personal belief would have led him to take a teenage boy into a fight with him?
That seemed the most obvious part to Warren. "Why, the belief that I can take care of anything on my own, more efficiently than anyone else. Obviously, this is not true, and I can now see more the value in a team. As well, when the team fails, it's hard not to take it personally but you just have to look at the strengths, fix what the weakness is, and move on." He shrugged. "In this case, my impatience was my own demise."
"But you weren't on your own," Adrienne countered, still not understanding his thought process. "You were with two other people, one of them a teenager, neither of whom worked for us. You essentially created your own team with these guys, rather than using the one on the payroll. How is that taking care of things on your own? I mean, if you'd prefer to continue doing that, working in some sort of random," she waved her hand dismissively, "Vigilante Bro Club or whatever, you're more than welcome to. But for fuck's sake, don't do it while on my fucking payroll."
"I agree. I mixed personal with business.". Isn't that what he just said? "It won't happen again. Breaching confidentiality like that....well. it was my confidentiality clause but still. It sets a poor precedent and is inappropriate."
"I care less about the confidentiality clause and more that you trusted two randos more than your own team," Adrienne told him pointedly. "That worries me. It worries me because you can quote professional words like 'confidentiality' and 'precedent' and talk about the policies and liability and say that you won't do it again til you're blue in the face, but saying those things doesn't translate to me as 'I trust my team now.' You didn't trust us then. You can tell me you'll use the team next time, but are you honestly telling me that you didn't trust us a month ago but you trust us now? How did that happen? What's changed? I'm sorry," she shrugged, "but this whole thing just sounds like you're going through the motions. Telling me what you know I want to hear.
"And if we were in another line of work," she continued, "that might suffice. Hell, if we were a regular detective agency, that might suffice. But we're more than likely to come up against dangerous people doing what we do for the people we're devoted to helping. Our lives could depend upon us working as a team. And if you don't feel, honestly, for real, that you can trust that team with anything and everything that might happen? Then why would we trust you?"
"I do trust you," he protested. "It was never a matter of trust. It was a matter of 'I want to do this now'. I'll have you know that joining the team was one of the better things I've done. My relationship with my teammates is something I value and I genuinely look forward to going into the office. I didn't think about how my actions would reflect on the office as a whole and that was stupid of me. But I do trust you all, and I can see how one person is not a team on their own."
"You keep coming back to this 'one person' and 'on my own' stuff," she reminded him, starting to lose patience with the roundabout conversation now, "but, again. You weren't on your own. In the office that night, you told us you took these guys, Matt and Miles, for a 'night out' at the warehouses. After Sue had given you information on the case you hired us for. That sounds to me like you deliberately took these two guys with you on XFI business. I get that you were impatient, didn't want to wait, whatever, and you know that was wrong. But for fuck's sake, stop pretending like you didn't deliberately involve these other guys! If you wanted a 'night out' at the warehouses to go check on Sue's intel, you could have chosen to take Lorna or Jess or Bobbi with you instead. But you didn't. And you're telling me that's not because you trust your two little bros more than your team?"
This was probably the first time in his life that he'd really struggled with the dual identity thing. There was no way to truly explain why he went with Matt and Miles,or that they were a team far longer than anything else in his life. He sighed heavily. "It wasn't planned. We were chatting, I mentioned what I'd learned and then we decided to hang out, check it out and see if we could find something. Something found us instead. This is the impulsive thing that I was talking about. In the future, even if I know something and I'm near it, you're right -- I should call an XFI teammember, not a buddy I happen to be with."
Adrienne gritted her teeth. She actually felt bad that he seemed to just be burying himself in deeper rather than helping dig himself out of the hole he was in with her good graces. At least he hadn't asked to be reinstated. That would be an awkward conversation indeed. Because all of this, unfortunately, was just making her trust him less rather than more. "You should?" she repeated, not believing she'd actually heard him say that. "You 'chatted' to a random 'buddy' about our work and now you're telling me that next time you should call a team member?" She got down off the counter and headed towards the door. "Look, I appreciate the apology, and I appreciate that you know you fucked up and shouldn't treat X-Factor as your 'pet project'. But I still don't feel like you really want to change how you operate. And until I get a sense that you're truly sincere about doing things differently, I don't think we have anything more to discuss."
"Am I supposed to get down on my hands and knees and beg?" And now he was getting annoyed. "I'm telling you I fucked up. I know I fucked up. I know I made poor choices. I'm doing my best here, but it's hard to undo years of behaviours in a few weeks." He looked away from her, his face softening slightly, as he lowered his tone. "I'm trying, Adrienne. I'm a terrible human beimg, and I know it. I've spent a lot of time fucking, drugging and dulling anything inside. This isn't an excuse but I AM trying. You can choose to believe I'm not sincere, I really don't care, but kick me out then. Don't string me along like this. "
Adrienne turned back to him and had to work extremely hard to hold off a smirk. She was a terrible human being, too. But this was what she'd been waiting for from him. She'd been starting to believe this version of him was a robot, he'd held off on showing any feeling for so long. Jeez. "Finally," she muttered, sounding relieved. "Wow, man. You were really starting to freak me out there." She narrowed her eyes at him, but her look was mildly sympathetic. "It wasn't my intention to string you along. Believe me. But this robotic ice queen schtick you were pulling? Doesn't do me any good when we're alone. Save it for the clients, y'know? If I'm meant to be your partner in this particular business venture, I need to see a human side of you so I can come to believe that you're sincere. I can't trust you unless I can see that you care. Does that make sense?"
He hated being played along almost as much as he hated opening up. The emotions won out. "I promise to cry at regular intervals," he said dryly, rolling his eyes. "You know how our society is. I haven't seen my mother's face change in easily 15 years. Even smiling causes wrinkles." She probably single handedly helped support the botox industry. "But I'll try not to shut you out. If this is what you need for trust, so be it. Now, is this where we hold hands and sing kumbaya?"
"Fuck, I hope not," she responded without thinking. "I was hoping this is where you make me a smoothie and we sing some ABBA or something." She returned to the counter again. "I don't need you to cry at regular intervals," Adrienne assured him. "And I understand why it's difficult for you to open up. I just... I read shit, y'know? I read history with my powers. And I read people, faces, without my powers. I don't often trust what I read or hear. I'm one of those infuriating people who needs to see something to believe it. It's why I don't trust very much."
Warren nodded as she spoke. "I didn't think about it that way. As I've said to many people -- everyone else has such interesting powers. I have wings. Majestic and boring." He turned towards his kitchen unit and started pulling out ingredients. "Smoothies it is...but ABBA might have to wait. I think I only know the words to Ring, Ring....."
"Wings aren't boring," Adrienne assured him. "Wings are really interesting and fun. Which only adds to the theory I share with my sister, which is that we develop powers that compliment our own personalities. What do you think?"
Warren laughed. "Well. With a body of a God, I suppose it only makes sense," he said with a wink. "Now, order me around and tell me what you'd like, boss."
Adrienne hadn't heard anyone leave anything at the suite door but, as she tackled some Meridian paperwork while lounging on the couch, began to notice that Garrison's creepy cat was parked in front of the door, trying to shove its paw underneath. She thought nothing of it at first, figuring the cat would get bored and leave shortly afterwards. But it didn't.
Finally she got up, tossing away the blanket that she'd thrown over her yoga pants and tank top, and padded over to the door, shooing the cat away and opening it. A box with a handwritten note on top of it was sitting in front of the door. Frowning, Adrienne picked it up and carried it inside, placing it on the kitchen counter. The cat jumped up beside her and she shoved it off. "Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's not for you," she told it in the usual annoyed tone she adopted with the cat, taking the note off the box.
"Special brownies. Not for children. Double-you," she read out loud. "Wade or Warren?" She put her hand on the box to Read it and confirmed that it was Warren who'd delivered it. "Special brownies?" she said to the cat, who made a noncommittal cat noise in response. Adrienne sighed, picked up the box, slipped some sandals on, and went over to Warren's suite.
"Frat boy, what the hell?" she called out as she knocked on his door.
First day back to the mansion, and already he'd pissed someone off. That had to be a new record for him. Sighing, Warren walked to the door and opened it.
"Have you never heard of apology brownies? Are you on a diet? If so, sorry. I can make you an apology smoothie, but that doesn't have the same ring to it."
Adrienne gave him what she was sure was now her Why-do-you-have-to-be-so-Warren? Look and handed him the box back. She wasn't actually angry, since he didn't know she was in recovery. But she still wasn't going to act like she was pleased that he'd given her an apology anything. "Maybe apology smoothie doesn't have the same ring, but I'm assuming it also doesn't have mind-altering drugs in it, either?" She really kinda wanted a smoothie now.
"Well, no. But that's because I haven't made it yet." Duh. Taking the box back, he walked towards his little kitchen and placed it on the counter. Someone else would enjoy it. "Although," he continued, "your tone suggests you aren't open to that. Drugs, that is. I don't know anyone who would turn down a smoothie."
This was where things got tricky. Adrienne had done a lot of self-searching since being dumped in this universe. And not in an existential kind of way, but in a literal one. So she knew that in this universe, Adrienne Frost was still a drug user. Adrienne could find no indications that the version of her in this universe had ever attended a support meeting. She had found evidence in her own financials that she'd been to rehab three times in her life- at nineteen, then again at twenty and then at twenty-two. But monthly payments to a person her powers had confirmed was a dealer had started when she'd moved to New York from Boston several years before and continued regularly until this January, when the universe had gone to shit. Judging by the amount paid, she wasn't a junkie, but extrapolated that the version of herself that belonged in this universe had been doing multiple bumps per week.
In actuality she had been sober for over fifteen years. But Warren didn't know that.
"I'm on the wagon. Six months," she said instead, making a mental note to replace the fifteen-year chip she carried around- which was a couple years old now, anyway- with a six-month chip. And, shit. Maybe she should give up drinking around the frankenberrycat people, too. Damn.
His mouth formed an O. That was quite possibly the last thing he expected to hear. As much as he dabbled in all sorts of illegal substances, he was quite confident that he could walk away from it all if he wanted to.
That being said,it was probably a severe case of 'not gonna happen to me-itis'.
"Congratulations. I apologize for my tasteless present then. Now I have to find something else to show you I really am sorry. I've spent a lot of time on the naughty stool and I have come to see that I behaved poorly."
"I don't think giving me things is really going to show me you're sorry," Adrienne responded pointedly, though she tried to keep the derision out of her voice, appreciating that at least, in his own way, he was trying to make things better. "I'd rather just talk to you about it."
Warren tried his best not to shudder. Another lecture. Great. Clearing his throat, he leaned back on a counter and gave a nod. "Alright. Let's have it."
"Wait, what? Me?" Adrienne shook her head, leaning against his kitchen counter. "No, I meant you talk to me. Despite how you act, Worthington," she informed him, "you're not a child, and I'm not your mother, or your headmistress. I said my piece at the office that night. You know how I feel. I'm not going to keep lecturing you about it. If you want me to understand that you're sorry, talk to me about it. What made you come to see that you behaved poorly? How is it that you were completely oblivious to how you behaved that night, but can now see the error of your ways?"
Fuck it. Honesty would work better. "I put the company in an awkward position by not adhering to the policies and principles that we try to honour. You are absolutely right -- the liability was astounding and if something worse had happened, it would have greatly impacted the integrity of the company. As a businessman myself, I can't believe that I allowed my personal beliefs to come ahead of the company." He straightened his tie and brushed off a wrinkle before looking at her again. "I was treating XFI as my own personal pet project and that was inexcusable."
Adrienne nodded solemnly. "Indeed." She lifted herself up onto the counter, legs dangling idly. "You wanna talk to me about your personal beliefs? The reason you did it in the first place?" She was still having trouble understanding that part. What personal belief would have led him to take a teenage boy into a fight with him?
That seemed the most obvious part to Warren. "Why, the belief that I can take care of anything on my own, more efficiently than anyone else. Obviously, this is not true, and I can now see more the value in a team. As well, when the team fails, it's hard not to take it personally but you just have to look at the strengths, fix what the weakness is, and move on." He shrugged. "In this case, my impatience was my own demise."
"But you weren't on your own," Adrienne countered, still not understanding his thought process. "You were with two other people, one of them a teenager, neither of whom worked for us. You essentially created your own team with these guys, rather than using the one on the payroll. How is that taking care of things on your own? I mean, if you'd prefer to continue doing that, working in some sort of random," she waved her hand dismissively, "Vigilante Bro Club or whatever, you're more than welcome to. But for fuck's sake, don't do it while on my fucking payroll."
"I agree. I mixed personal with business.". Isn't that what he just said? "It won't happen again. Breaching confidentiality like that....well. it was my confidentiality clause but still. It sets a poor precedent and is inappropriate."
"I care less about the confidentiality clause and more that you trusted two randos more than your own team," Adrienne told him pointedly. "That worries me. It worries me because you can quote professional words like 'confidentiality' and 'precedent' and talk about the policies and liability and say that you won't do it again til you're blue in the face, but saying those things doesn't translate to me as 'I trust my team now.' You didn't trust us then. You can tell me you'll use the team next time, but are you honestly telling me that you didn't trust us a month ago but you trust us now? How did that happen? What's changed? I'm sorry," she shrugged, "but this whole thing just sounds like you're going through the motions. Telling me what you know I want to hear.
"And if we were in another line of work," she continued, "that might suffice. Hell, if we were a regular detective agency, that might suffice. But we're more than likely to come up against dangerous people doing what we do for the people we're devoted to helping. Our lives could depend upon us working as a team. And if you don't feel, honestly, for real, that you can trust that team with anything and everything that might happen? Then why would we trust you?"
"I do trust you," he protested. "It was never a matter of trust. It was a matter of 'I want to do this now'. I'll have you know that joining the team was one of the better things I've done. My relationship with my teammates is something I value and I genuinely look forward to going into the office. I didn't think about how my actions would reflect on the office as a whole and that was stupid of me. But I do trust you all, and I can see how one person is not a team on their own."
"You keep coming back to this 'one person' and 'on my own' stuff," she reminded him, starting to lose patience with the roundabout conversation now, "but, again. You weren't on your own. In the office that night, you told us you took these guys, Matt and Miles, for a 'night out' at the warehouses. After Sue had given you information on the case you hired us for. That sounds to me like you deliberately took these two guys with you on XFI business. I get that you were impatient, didn't want to wait, whatever, and you know that was wrong. But for fuck's sake, stop pretending like you didn't deliberately involve these other guys! If you wanted a 'night out' at the warehouses to go check on Sue's intel, you could have chosen to take Lorna or Jess or Bobbi with you instead. But you didn't. And you're telling me that's not because you trust your two little bros more than your team?"
This was probably the first time in his life that he'd really struggled with the dual identity thing. There was no way to truly explain why he went with Matt and Miles,or that they were a team far longer than anything else in his life. He sighed heavily. "It wasn't planned. We were chatting, I mentioned what I'd learned and then we decided to hang out, check it out and see if we could find something. Something found us instead. This is the impulsive thing that I was talking about. In the future, even if I know something and I'm near it, you're right -- I should call an XFI teammember, not a buddy I happen to be with."
Adrienne gritted her teeth. She actually felt bad that he seemed to just be burying himself in deeper rather than helping dig himself out of the hole he was in with her good graces. At least he hadn't asked to be reinstated. That would be an awkward conversation indeed. Because all of this, unfortunately, was just making her trust him less rather than more. "You should?" she repeated, not believing she'd actually heard him say that. "You 'chatted' to a random 'buddy' about our work and now you're telling me that next time you should call a team member?" She got down off the counter and headed towards the door. "Look, I appreciate the apology, and I appreciate that you know you fucked up and shouldn't treat X-Factor as your 'pet project'. But I still don't feel like you really want to change how you operate. And until I get a sense that you're truly sincere about doing things differently, I don't think we have anything more to discuss."
"Am I supposed to get down on my hands and knees and beg?" And now he was getting annoyed. "I'm telling you I fucked up. I know I fucked up. I know I made poor choices. I'm doing my best here, but it's hard to undo years of behaviours in a few weeks." He looked away from her, his face softening slightly, as he lowered his tone. "I'm trying, Adrienne. I'm a terrible human beimg, and I know it. I've spent a lot of time fucking, drugging and dulling anything inside. This isn't an excuse but I AM trying. You can choose to believe I'm not sincere, I really don't care, but kick me out then. Don't string me along like this. "
Adrienne turned back to him and had to work extremely hard to hold off a smirk. She was a terrible human being, too. But this was what she'd been waiting for from him. She'd been starting to believe this version of him was a robot, he'd held off on showing any feeling for so long. Jeez. "Finally," she muttered, sounding relieved. "Wow, man. You were really starting to freak me out there." She narrowed her eyes at him, but her look was mildly sympathetic. "It wasn't my intention to string you along. Believe me. But this robotic ice queen schtick you were pulling? Doesn't do me any good when we're alone. Save it for the clients, y'know? If I'm meant to be your partner in this particular business venture, I need to see a human side of you so I can come to believe that you're sincere. I can't trust you unless I can see that you care. Does that make sense?"
He hated being played along almost as much as he hated opening up. The emotions won out. "I promise to cry at regular intervals," he said dryly, rolling his eyes. "You know how our society is. I haven't seen my mother's face change in easily 15 years. Even smiling causes wrinkles." She probably single handedly helped support the botox industry. "But I'll try not to shut you out. If this is what you need for trust, so be it. Now, is this where we hold hands and sing kumbaya?"
"Fuck, I hope not," she responded without thinking. "I was hoping this is where you make me a smoothie and we sing some ABBA or something." She returned to the counter again. "I don't need you to cry at regular intervals," Adrienne assured him. "And I understand why it's difficult for you to open up. I just... I read shit, y'know? I read history with my powers. And I read people, faces, without my powers. I don't often trust what I read or hear. I'm one of those infuriating people who needs to see something to believe it. It's why I don't trust very much."
Warren nodded as she spoke. "I didn't think about it that way. As I've said to many people -- everyone else has such interesting powers. I have wings. Majestic and boring." He turned towards his kitchen unit and started pulling out ingredients. "Smoothies it is...but ABBA might have to wait. I think I only know the words to Ring, Ring....."
"Wings aren't boring," Adrienne assured him. "Wings are really interesting and fun. Which only adds to the theory I share with my sister, which is that we develop powers that compliment our own personalities. What do you think?"
Warren laughed. "Well. With a body of a God, I suppose it only makes sense," he said with a wink. "Now, order me around and tell me what you'd like, boss."
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