xp_logs | Hey Jealousy

Doug and Amanda wake up after last night, and have a talk about the $64,000 question: where do we go from here?

Doug awoke, sunlight falling onto the empty space in the bed beside him. He felt a little bit hungover, but thanks to the water and aspirin Amanda had forced on him the night before, he felt merely elderly rather than the splitting headaches he'd had the two other times he'd been hung over. Then his glance fell on the nightstand, and the large glass of fresh water and the bottle of aspirin sitting there. There was a post-it stuck on the aspirin, with two words in Amanda's familiar scrawl: "Eat me." Shaking his head wryly at Amanda's humor, he uncapped the aspirin bottle and chased two down with a long drink of water.

He'd was just setting the glass back on the nightstand when there was a noise at the door, and Amanda herself appeared, wearing a man's fleecy shirt and a pair of orange woolly socks, and holding two mugs, steam and the miraculous scent of coffee wafting from them. "Thought you might need this," she said with a slight smile as she came in and set one mug down on the nightstand before sitting on the bed, facing him. She still looked tired, but there was also a certain... glow about her. "I called work, let them know we'd be late. Sleep all right?"

Doug smiled at how comfortable this all felt. Sitting up more fully, he pulled the covers around his waist and accepted the proffered mug. "Mmmm," he hummed happily after a sip. "And yeah, slept better than I had in quite a while," he admitted, aware that he was probably glowing just a bit as well.

Amanda curled her legs up under her, tugging the shirt down over her knees before sipping from her own mug. Tea - there were very few circumstances that she'd drink coffee and she didn't have enough sugar to make it palatable to her standards, especially given the hangover. Looking at Doug over the top of her mug, she noted he was neither apologising or proposing. His calmness was definitely a good sign.

"'M still a bit jet-lagged still - woke up a little while ago and couldn't get back to sleep," she replied, propping the mug on her knee. "I tried not to wake you, tho'. You looked like you needed it."

Doug nodded. "Between jet lag, and then the painkillers, and then the pub crawl, that's a pretty safe assumption, yeah," he agreed. He stretched languidly, careful not to spill his coffee. "How're you feeling?" he asked, aware that the question covered a variety of levels.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she replied, smiling a little before answering. "Good. I'm feeling good. I know I said it last night, but... I needed that. Not just the sex, but, well, everything, I suppose." She tilted her head a little at him. "You?"

"The same," Doug replied. "I definitely needed all of it, and I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday." He paused and took another sip of coffee while he marshaled his thoughts. He took one of Amanda's hands in his and gently brushed his thumb over the back of it. "I guess the sixty-four thousand dollar question is where we go from here," he said, deciding to meet the issue head-on.

Amanda nodded, swallowing nervously. "I'm..." she began and then shook her head. "I was going to say I wasn't sure, see what you thought first, but that's not fair." Taking a breath and a steadying sip of tea, she went on. "You're my friend, Doug," she said simply. "I care about you, and I want to be there for you when you need me, but... if you want more than that, I don't think I can give it to you."

Doug nodded, processing what Amanda was saying. He wasn't entirely sure of his own feelings, either. Part of him was curious to what a relationship with Amanda would be like, but part of him recognized that they were both still a bit hung up on other people. "Why's that?" he asked, not sounding upset, merely encouraging her to elaborate, since she'd obviously already given it some thought, whereas he'd just woken up.

"Because..." And here she had to take another breath, to still the butterflies in her stomach this time. This had taken her so long to admit, perhaps because she was so bloody terrified of what it might mean. "Because we're both in love with someone else."

Doug was not exactly at peace with the fact that he was still in love with Marie-Ange, especially given that she was dating someone else, but he had at least admitted it to himself. He raised the mug to his mouth with a gentle smile. "Finally admitted it to yourself, did you?" he asked Amanda lightly, squeezing her hand in reassurance.

She poked her tongue out at him. "Smartarse," she told him, but with an answering smile. It slipped as she turned her mind back to the topic at hand, though. "Yeah, there's only so long I could keep fooling myself, and I realised last night... I love Angelo. Always have, even if he sees me as his sister or his friend instead of... anything else. I was thinking, this morning, watching you sleep... it'd be easy for us to try and start something. And maybe it'd work for a while. But it wouldn't be fair, on either of us." She looked up from her lap, and their linked hands, to meet his eyes squarely. "We're better than being someone else's second best. Both of us."

She was right, Doug reflected. And not once in there had she said anything about not being good enough, or being too messed up. He supposed it was all a mark of how much they'd both matured. "There's only one way to find out how he feels," he told Amanda with a smile. He pulled his hand from hers and picked up the condoms he'd brought down the previous night. After turning them over in his hand for a moment, he handed them to her. "Hopefully you'll be needing these a bit sooner than I will," he said, just the smallest bit wistfully.

Incredibly, she blushed, rosy red to the roots of her hair. Argh. The thought of her and Angelo using them was appealing, but the chances of it happening? She shied away from the inevitable confession that would have to happen first. And the gesture, coming from Doug of all people. Things had definitely changed. "Thanks," she choked out, tucking the condoms away in the pocket of her shirt. Then, careful of her tea, she leaned over and kissed Doug briefly on the lips. "For everything." With a grin, she added. "And you get all emo on me again and it's hair of the dog for you, mate."

"Yeah, yeah, I know, be an emo muppet, do a shot," Doug groused goodnaturedly as he leaned over the side of the bed and rummaged around for his boxers.

Leaning down, Amanda fished his boxers up from her side of the bed. "Doug?" she called, and when he looked at her, tossed them playfully in his face. "You can have first shower. Spare towel's on the rail, and if you use all my shampoo, you're a dead man."