Jean / PSYCHE → she's always been the tower (ex_psyches432) wrote in intime,
Jean cleared her throat and stood, leaving her PDA on the armrest. "Steve, do you have a handkerchief?" she asked over her shoulder, betting that he did, and when he graciously handed it to her, she seemed both grateful and approving.
"He'll be fine," she assured the group as she crossed the gap to find Charles' elbow with her hand. She helped Jubilee to steady him. "Just too many telepaths in one room, that's all. It happens sometimes, depending on the telepath." Privately, her heart had just hit her throat, but on the outside she had a level-headed air that said this wasn't a big deal and nobody should treat it like one. With a cant of her head, she indicated to Jubilee that they should get Charles seated in the chair he'd been leaning on a moment ago. It was the nearest one.
Now to direct focus onto something else.
"Unless this house was built somewhere else than where I expect it to be, we're in the town of North Salem, in the north-east corner of Westchester County, New York," she explained, rattling the information off as easily as you'd expect from someone who'd lived there for over twenty years. It was a solid way to deflect attention from what they were doing, and once Charles was seated, she planned to quietly press the handkerchief into his palm so he could take care of that nosebleed. "New York City is about an hour directly south-east of us. Thirty miles or so. The land this house is built on backs onto the Graham Hills County Park, and on the other side of that is the Sprain Brook Parkway, which takes you to the New York State Thruway, and then into the city. Even if the local roads are bad here, the highways should be better. If we could get a vehicle working, we could probably manage it."
Someone -- anyone -- take up the torch? Jean, every bit as New Englander as Charles, felt that one of the things you should be able to rely on the people around you to do was to go on as if your embarrassing moment hadn't just happened.