xp_logs | Doug and Amanda: Curry Night!

Backdated to last Saturday evening. Doug and Amanda go out for their promised curry night. They talk about things, and manage to have a nice, fun, relatively normal time. Well, and a little bit of a food fight.

Amanda was just finishing up some of the coursework she'd been assigned when there was a knock at her door. Doug, in all likelihood, considering they'd arranged that long-delayed curry night.

"It's open!" she called, closing her notebook and beginning to stack her textbooks on the coffee table.

"Hey," Doug called quietly, opening the door and leaning against the doorjamb. Seeing Amanda stacking the books, he smiled. "How did classes go?"

"Good," she replied with a grin. "Except I have a statistics class that goes with the sociology stuff that's going to kick my arse and then some. You set to go? I could eat a horse and the jockey as well."

"Then by all means, let us away, friends, to obtain comestibles posthaste!" Doug declaimed in his best Dr. Henry McCoy imitation, striking a faux-dramatic pose. He grinned as he waited for Amanda to get her keys. "And if you want, I can probably help with the statistics. Numbers love me."

She giggled at the McCoy imitation, grabbing her keys and her wallet from the coffee table where she'd dumped them coming in. "I'd noticed. Me they plot against. But I'd love help if you've got the time and it won't be like the tutoring last time. I've gotten past the whole 'tear worksheets into little bits when they piss me off' phase."

"Thank god for that," Doug agreed mock-piously. To say that Amanda had been a handful the last time he'd tutored her would be an understatement. Of course, it had ended with the love potion, which was better off unmentioned. Amanda had done a lot of growing in the time since, even if she didn't necessarily always believe it about herself. "I think tutoring could be arranged, yeah," he answered with a sidelong look and smile.

"You're a brick, you know that?" she told him with a smile of her own, nudging him slightly so she could close the door.

***

Doug leaned back in his chair with a noise of pure contentment after his first bite of the curry. "Oh, that's good," he murmured, some of the stress and tension in him relaxing away in the face of good spicy curry. "I needed that. Ta for the invite, Amanda," he said to the girl across the table from him, unconsciously mimicking some of her vocal mannerisms.

She gave him a shy smile. "I figured both of us could do with it." Especially after the last couple of days. "And since we're working together we're probably going to be spending a lot of time together. No harm getting to know each other better, is there?"

Doug shrugged a bit self-consciously. "I guess," he replied noncommittally. Amanda was Marie-Ange's friend more than his, and he was still coming to grips with the fact that Amanda had worried enough about him to come knocking on his door so soon after the breakup. "I just...y'know, Angie," he said lamely after a few silent seconds. Not that he needed any help beating himself up for the way things were.

"Yeah." Amanda shrugged a little herself. "To be honest, I've seen you as Angie's boyfriend for so long, I haven't really thought of you any other way. And that's not fair to you. Or to her. Of all people I should know how much it sucks when people assume you're some sort of symbiotic unit." Moira's classes had stuck, apparently, since Amanda said "symbiotic" with the same rolling sounds as the Scot.

"Yeah, but symbiosis implies healthy coexistence," Doug fell back on nerdiness, for lack of anything else to say. "And lord knows Angie and I weren't exactly having a healthy relationship toward the end there..." He tailed off somewhat lamely. No need to mention that he'd -never- thought Amanda and Manuel were anything approaching healthy in their relationship.

Amanda lay down her fork and gave his forearm a brief pat. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'd be a total hypocrite if I didn't know just how fucked up Manny and I were." Pulling her hand back she returned her attention to her food with a small shrug. "Sometimes you get so caught up in things, in what the other person wants you to be, you ignore what it's doin' to both of you."

Doug leaned over his plate, not sure at all how to respond to Amanda. He'd had a lot of that experience lately. Not that he'd had a hard time coming up with angry words to throw at Marie-Ange, though. He sighed and fidgeted with his food.

She watched him sympathetically for a moment and decided to give him an out - poor bastard was so worried about being seen as running away he wouldn't give himself the option. "So, how're you finding work? Place crazy enough for you?"

"Work has found me," Doug quipped weakly, looking up gratefully at Amanda's subject change. "And plenty of it, at that. Too much to do, and Pete wants it yesterday." He shrugged. "How about you? Enjoying being Research Lass?"

She beamed. "I'm loving it. Now Wanda's here, I actually have someone to work with, and she and I have always got on. Now I just have to convince our high and mighty shrink to let me stay on." She rolled her eyes slightly - that thread on her journal had gotten way out of hand and she still wasn't sure how.

"She does seem a bit difficult to get along with, that's for sure," Doug agreed. "If I could go in and not say anything for an hour, and get away with it, I think I would." He drew designs on the table absently with a finger. Talking about his feelings was pretty much dead last on the priority list these days.

"She's just so... superior, y'know?" Amanda grumbled, stabbing at her unfortunate curry with her fork. "I'll tell you what she reminds me of - all those court-appointed shrinks I had to deal with back in England. Made you feel like a bit of dogshit they'd stepped in just by looking at you funny."

Reaching out hesitantly, Doug placed his hand over Amanda's to still the angry jerk of her fork. "You okay?" he asked, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "Anything I can do to help?"

She looked up and gave him a wry smile. "I'm dealing with it. With a minimum of tantrums - got it pointed out to me that it's a condition of the job and if I want the job, I have to put up with it. I think I've got a decent compromise, tho'. Sofia evaluates me, and if she thinks I need therapy, I get to go to Samson to choose someone. Hell, I'd go to him and all, only I don't think he's allowed to see people who aren't students."

Doug nodded, then belatedly drew his hand back after a long moment. "Samson's a good guy," he said, at a loss for words again. His life had been pretty boring lately, what with all the work he'd been doing on the database system.

"For a shrink," she said, but she was joking. She actually liked Samson. Doug's awkwardness was starting to register, though. "Hey, if there's something you wanted to talk about, I'm all ears. I didn't drag you out for you to listen to all my shite. Curry Night is about mutual venting."

"Venting?" Doug asked. "No, no, it's okay, I just..." He trailed off, then sighed. "I just don't know what to do or think or say all that much lately," he admitted quietly. "I have work, and I enjoy doing something that feels useful and stuff, but other than that..." He waved a hand. "I don't know what to do with myself, really."

"Well, conversation works too, but bitching is more fun." She winked at him. "And it sounds like you need to get out more, mate. Go out, have some fun, relax a bit. Things're shitty now, yeah, but it doesn't mean you're not allowed to enjoy yourself a bit." She grinned. "Come out to one of our Friday sessions after work. You don't have to drink if you don't want to and the Trenchcoat Brigade aren't arseholes all the time. Well, Remy can be but that's because of his leg." A shadow crossed her face fleetingly. "But now we've got Wanda too, it's a lark. Maybe one day we'll even drag Ms. Hoity Toity down. She might even relax herself, but it might involve getting the stick out of her bum."

"I just might take you up on that," Doug said thoughtfully after taking another bite of curry. "And I'll believe Ms. Hoity-Toity does that when I see it. Maybe it's her secondary mutant power, being that superior." He chuckled at a silly thought. "Or maybe it's Monet in disguise as part of a secret villainous plot to take us all out through psychotherapy," he joked with something approximating a natural smile.

Amanda giggled. "Every group needs one, I suppose," she said. "It's like those movies. We've already got the grumpy man with a past - well, two of 'em, really - Wanda's our wild woman, you're the computer expert who's cooler than your average geek..." She grinned at his reaction. "Sofia's our Ice Maiden. We'll just have to see if she's got the heart of gold or not."

It was nice to see Amanda chuckling and smiling. Good to know that she was having fun being out with boring old Doug. He shook his head to try and banish the self-mocking thought. "So where do you fit in?" he asked, resting his chin on his hand. "I mean, you were definitely wild back in the day, but you've settled down a bit..."

"Me? I'm easy - reformed street punk." She wrinkled her nose at him humorously and ate a bit more. "Taken in and given another shot, blah, blah, blah." Amanda had to admit, she was enjoying herself. Hopefully Doug was too - he and Angie both needed a break from everything. "Me old mates in Brighton wouldn't believe I was the same person."

"Blah, blah, redemptioncakes? So you're Angel, not Ripper?" Doug joked with a snicker. "Should I start checking for inordinate amounts of hair gel?" He ducked in case Amanda got the idea to throw some food at him. "I doubt most of the people who knew me back before I came to Xavier's would recognize me either," he continued more seriously. "I think we've all grown up a lot in the past few years."

"Function of how time works, growing up." She tossed a small chunk of bread roll at him with a grin. "And there's a whole new generation of trouble makers going through the school. The circle of life is complete."

"It's the ciiiiiiiiiiiiircle of liiiiiiiiiiiiiife..." Doug sang grandiosely, then ducked as a barrage of bread pieces came flying across the table at him.