thatwaslucky | MCA #1- Friday night

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MCA #1- Friday night

Rey was having a quiet, and probably late, night. She was going through one of the old texts, an extremely long project that required translating several languages, some of which were almost dead, on very, very old pages. It was maybe the nerdiest thing she did and she loved it, but it was also probably the most time-consuming thing she'd ever do.

She was hunched over her coffee table with notebooks she'd largely filled with notes that she hadn't wanted to write into the books, pretty sure at some point she was going to blink and see that several hours had gone by.

[For one!]

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Well, hopefully she wouldn't mind an interruption. Because here one was.

Adrian knocked on Rey's door, even his knock somehow sounding exhausted. Or maybe that was just him. Who could say?

Belatedly, he realized that he probably should have called first before just showing up at her door. Whoops. Great Forest, let Rey be in a forgiving mood tonight.

What was fun about Jedi powers was that she could tell he was there before he even knocked, so Rey was up and opening the door pretty quickly.

It was also not hard to catch onto the exhaustion, which was why there was a more subdued, "Addian, hi," as she let him in.

"Hey," he said, and even as tired and...everywhere...as he was right now, he couldn't help but smile at the sight of her. "I'm really sorry about this, but I've had a day and I can't face the thought of going home just yet, and I was hoping that maybe...it would be okay? To come over." He patted down his pockets. "I know I should have called, but I wasn't thinking and I think I maybe dropped my phone in the swamp..."

He was just going to continue to ramble at you like this, Rey, until you cut him off.

"You can always come over, don't worry about calling," she assured him, reaching for his hand to pull him over to the sofa. "What happened?"

Adrian sank down onto the couch with a grateful sigh - and then almost immediately jumped back up again. "I'm filthy, I shouldn't be sitting on your pretty whimsical sofa like this."

Covered in swamp muck, and ash, and mushroom zombie chunks and Forest only knew what else.

"Do you want to clean up first?" Rey asked. "Otherwise I don't care about the sofa."

She hadn't heard about mushroom zombies yet, though.

"Could I?" he asked. Because he cared, Rey. He cared. "I probably have some spare pants in one of my pockets, but I probably reek of swamp. And smoke. And maybe zombie." He heaved a giant sigh.

"This seems like it's going to be a story," she said with a frown. "Let me get a towel."

"You're not wrong there," Adrian said, sighing. "Hey...Rey? Would you ever be okay with living in my closet? No, right?"

A very long story.

"Uh," she said, sincerely hoping he wasn't asking her to. "If I were to ever live in your house I would need more than a closet."

"Exactly!" he said, throwing his arms in the air in sheer validation. "People deserve more than a closet! Even a big closet. Thank you!"

With a deep breath, Adrian attempted to corral his thoughts, putting them into some kind of discernible order, before Rey officially decided he was a madman.

"Shower," he repeated, more to himself than to Rey. "Let me take a shower, and then I'll explain. As much as I can anyway."

Solomon Grundy? The guy on the bike? The resurrection? Yeah, he was out of explanations for those.

She didn't think he was a madman, but she was Concerned. But she led him over to the bathroom so she could get and hand him a towel.

"Take as long as you need," she said, since she figured he might need some decompression time.

He leaned in and pressed a grateful kiss to her forehead. "Thanks," he said, more quietly. "I really needed this tonight. You. Thank you."

And then he stepped into the bathroom to wash the day off of himself. As Rey suspected, he was in there longer than a strict washing would suggest, as he tried to replay out the events of the day in some kind of regular order.

She would hear a loud, aggrieved "Dammit!" not long after the water stopped, though.

Rey had spent the time cleaning her own stuff up (and anything that might have transferred onto the sofa), and she was on her feet the second she heard that.

She knocked on the door before opening it partially. Not that she hadn't seen him naked before, but it was polite. "What happened?"

Adrian turned around, giving her a chagrined smile. "So, I was half right," he said, opening up his towel to show her what lay beneath: the garish swim trunks from that weird day on their trip. "I had something to change into in my pockets, but these are hardly pants."

He frowned at the pair on the floor, like he was giving serious consideration to changing back.

Rey tried not to laugh. She did. She just immediately failed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know you still had those."

"I didn't either," Adrian groused, though the sound of Rey's laughter did have him relaxing just a bit. "I think I stashed them in a pocket while we were experimenting with whether or not they'd stay and then I forgot they were there."

He'd been otherwise occupied, you see.

"...At least I don't have the flippers, too," he said, trying to look on the bright side.

"Oh yes, that would be ridiculous," she smiled. "I don't have another option. I could get some other clothes from your place?"

Adrian quickly shook his head. "I can't--not tonight. That's part of the story." He toweled his hair down, curls plastered to his face and cheeks. "Boston is going to be even more angry at me than he already is, but...I just can't face what I did to my Grove tonight. Tomorrow, I can get started trying to fix it, trying to heal it, but tonight I'm just...tapped."

Magically, physically, certainly emotionally.

The smile disappeared. "What happened to your Grove?"

"I did," Adrian said quietly. "I pulled on its power. Too much. I could feel bits of it dying through the link, but I don't know how much." He hung his head. "Possibly too much," he whispered, finally saying the words that he'd been hiding from since he'd pushed himself to his feet. "It's still so young. And I needed a lot to keep Pam from dying."

While Rey wouldn't claim to know what that felt like, she knew how upsetting that was to him, and she walked over to wrap her arms around him. Any state of undress didn't matter. "Is Pam okay?"

Adrian nodded, and let out a slightly disbelieving laugh. "Better than okay," he said. "Reborn. Literally. It's--okay, yeah, let's go sit for this and I'll try to explain."

Forgive him Rey, he didn't have that Fandom blase attitude towards the revolving door of death that so many folks around here did.

Hey, the respected his attitude. For reasons.

She let go so that she could lead him back to the sofa and let him get settled. "Do you need anything?" she checked.

"This is good," he said, leaning against her. "Might need a water in a bit, but right now, this is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for."

Well, that and a place to begin. "Do you know Pam well?" he asked. "Or at all, really?"

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