xp_logs | Amanda, Doug - Monday evening

Emergency Curry Session! As a result of these threads, Amanda whisks Doug out of the office and away from the computer before he says something Dumb.

From the tea and coffee station, Amanda glanced over at Doug, hunched over his desk, glaring at the screen. She knew exactly what he was glaring at, and she was buggered if she was going to let him get all shirty over what had started off as a silly remark. He hadn't replied to her comment, and if he didn't get up soon, she was going to...

He raised his hands, as if to type.

"Oh no, you don't," she muttered to herself, and setting down her mug, she stalked over to him. With a sharp movement she siezed his ear between her thumb and forefinger, her grip not too tight, but certainly firm. "C'mon, you," she ordered. "We're getting out of here."

"Goddamit, Amanda," Doug seethed, then yelped as the fingers on his ears pinched harder. "Ow ow pain pain pain..." he muttered as she directed him toward the door. "Floccinaucinihilipilificatrix !" he exclaimed with feeling after they had left the building and Amanda finally let go of his cartilage. Half of swearing, he had learned, was about inflection. With the right emphasis, any word could be turned to a swearword. He rubbed at his ear and pursed his lips angrily.

Amanda looked unrepentant. "Curry?" she suggested sweetly, crossing her arms over her front and ignoring the passersby who were giving them strange looks, having seen her drag him out by the ear.

Doug crossed his arms over his chest in reply, but where Amanda's gesture had been quiet but unyielding resolve, Doug's was full of pique and frustration. He thought about yelling and waving his arms, but he didn't feel like making any more of a scene than they already had. Lord knew his personal issues had already been dredged out in front of the viewing public enough for one day. So he opted for the opposite road and merely shrugged and followed Amanda down the street without saying anything.

Rolling her eyes, Amanda shrugged and dropped back enough to slip her arm through Doug's. "You know, if the wind changes, your face'll be stuck like that," she offered conversationally.

Doug's arm quivered, as the closeness of Amanda inside his personal space caused a roil of confusion in him. He hunched his shoulders up farther in the November evening cool, and tried to swallow down the surge of negative emotions he'd been feeling most of the afternoon. He grunted noncommittally. The silent treatment was childish, yes, but he wasn't feeling very mature at the moment.

Bloody hell, he gets any more wound up he'll explode. "'So, how was your trip to Germany, Amanda'?" she continued, in a not very convincing attempt at Doug's accent. "All right," she went on in her own. "Read a lot of papers on feeding centres in Nigeria, stood in a lot of queues in government offices and made a major life change. You?"

Doug appreciated what Amanda was trying to do in drawing him out, but he wasn't really ready to talk without all of his pent-up feelings exploding onto her. And that was entirely unfair to be laying on her. Still, he managed to unclench a bit, his shoulders rolling back down to their normal position and his arm not trying to jump away from where Amanda's hand lay gently on it. He still wasn't saying anything, but at least he looked a bit less wound up.

She felt the slight change in tension through his arm, and nodded a little to herself. No more pushing, for now. "Germany's got bloody awful curry, you know," she continued, her tone becoming more conversational. "It's all sausages and cabbage and breaded bits of meat. Beer's all right, tho'. Steins the size of your head." She prattled on in this way until they reached the curry place, not needing Doug to reply, just filling the awkward silence with small talk and giving him a chance to cool down a bit. As they walked in, she breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of food. "Yep, that's the stuff. Usual table?"

The host of the restaurant recognized the pair on sight and led them to their customary table. The aroma wafting throughout the restaurant caused Doug to visibly relax further, enough to quietly place his order when the waiter came to the table. Once their drinks had been brought and the waiter departed, Doug traced designs idly on the tablecloth with a finger, his eyes cast down to the tabletop.

Amanda took a long drink of her beer, then leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms above her head to ease her back. "Gah, think I need Wanda to throw me 'round the Danger Gym a bit, I'm all stiff from sitting for the last month," she complained, then leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands. "Sorry," she said after considering him a long moment. "'Bout the ear thing. I had to get you out of there before you went and said something you might regret later. You were getting pretty wound up there."

Doug's hands clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white from the tension. Then slowly, he forced himself to uncurl his hands, looking at the crescents his nails had dug into his palms. "I was being silly, and then all of a sudden Forge and Garrison were conducting an indepth theoretical dissection of my taste in porn, not to mention my love life. And then -she- pops in with 'actually, no, carry on. This is -fascinating-'," he said mockingly in a breathy, vapid imitation of Marie-Ange's accent. His face closed off. "But I wasn't going to go all turbo on you about it."

Amanda shrugged. "Doug, you're my mate. You need to go turbo, go turbo. You go too far and I'll tell you, but after living in New Orleans with the Cajun Prince of Grumpy, I doubt you will. I'm pretty thick-skinned, me." Sipping from her beer, she gave him an appraising look. "So what pissed you off so much about the whole thing? Forge and Garrison were just being silly, having a lend of you. You've done the same with Mark a dozen times. Blokes being blokes."

"I don't discuss Mark's tastes and preferences in a public forum, and I certainly don't stage minute analysis of whatever porn collection he might have," Doug shot back heatedly. "That sort of thing is private." He grimaced. That had embarassed him, true, but the real hurt had been Marie-Ange's comment about the discussion being fascinating. He felt laid bare, and intensely mortified because of it.

"Only 'cause his post-it won't let him," Amanda replied mildly. Doug was more than wound up, he was really messed up about this. She knew he was a bit on the conservative side when it came to this sort of thing, but he'd loosened up considerably working at Snow Valley - he'd had to, or he'd have died of embarrassment the first week. She didn't say anything for a while, the food arriving during her thoughtful silence. As they began to eat, Doug stabbing at his food with short, jerky movements. "What were you going to say, when I pulled you away?" she asked at last, quietly.

"I don't know," Doug admitted. "Something angry, and probably hurtful." He sighed. "You're probably right that I would have regretted it later. I just felt...piled on. And hurt." He ate mechanically, chewing and swallowing and stabbing the next bite of food on his fork.

"Be nice to the curry, it didn't do anything to hurt you," Amanda joked gently. eating at a more sedate pace. Good curry wasn't to be rushed. "But it wasn't the boys, was it? You only lost your rag when Angie chimed in."

Doug's fork paused on the way to the plate. He had hoped it hadn't been that blindingly obvious what had made him so angry. Not much chance of that now, especially when Amanda could see that her guess had hit home.

"Score one for the spy-in-training," Amanda said, but not unkindly. "Look, Doug, it's not hard to see you still set store in Angie - no-one can get at you half as well as she does, and that's part of the problem. But maybe she was embarassed too and did the hoity-toity thing as a defence mechanism, same as she always does. I have to admit, even I'd be a bit taken aback by a bunch of guys talking about measuring my hotness on a public journal and it's been noted before I've got all the shame of a five-pound stripper. So maybe she wasn't having a go at you, just reacting the only way she knew how?"

"It hurt," Doug repeated in a whisper. "I felt...completely laid bare, and all she could say was that it was fascinating." He kept coming back to that word, as it was the linchpin of the whole thing. If Marie-Ange hadn't said anything, or hadn't reacted in such a seemingly amused manner, Doug probably would have been able to shrug things off a lot easier.

Amanda laid down her fork as realisation struck. Of course, how could she have been so stupid. "You still love her," she said, sympathy lacing her words.

Doug's silverware clattered onto his plate as they slipped from nerveless fingers. He looked at Amanda, a harried look on his face. "What? No," he tried to bluster. Then he realized Amanda knew him too well. "You can't...you can't tell her," he said desperately.

"Hey, easy there, mate..." Amanda reached over to touch the back of his hand. "'S all right, I won't say anything if you don't want me to." Since the last time she'd interfered in someone's lovelife had ended so well for Angelo. "But why don't you just say something to her?"

Doug shook his head. "I don't... she's gone on with her life," he said slowly. "She doesn't need me dumping that on her again." Not to mention he was too scared to risk being rejected. He sighed. "I should just get over it."

And for once, Amanda didn't have a comeback. She wasn't entirely sure Marie-Ange had gone on with her life - she hadn't exactly been back into the dating thing since the breakup - but she wasn't going to bully Doug into doing something stupid. Especially since she had no idea how it would be received. "I don't know what to say, Doug," she admitted at last. "I wish it was like the movies, where the friend tells the bloke to go for it, and he gets the girl and it ends happily ever after. But it isn't. Just... don't give up hope entirely, yeah? She hasn't dated anyone else since you two broke up, so that's got to be a good sign?" She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as Doug.

Doug shook his head. "Maybe," he allowed. "But I'm still not going to say anything." He picked his fork back up and continued eating.

"All right," Amanda said reluctantly. Doug gave her a Look, and she hastened to add: "And I won't say anything to her. Believe me, I'm not going to mess things up trying to help." She followed his lead, picking up her fork again and using it to push some curry and rice onto a piece of naan bread. "So," she said after a while, brightly. "How about them Mets?"