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xp_logsAfter just over seven months, Marie-Ange finally asks Emma to help with Doug's total lack of libido problem. It goes about as can be expected.
Warning: Discussion of sexual topics. No actual sex. May or may not be safe for work.
It had been, Emma realised, far too long since she had been to the Snow Valley offices, but between Frost Enterprises, the Hellfire Club and investigating Shaw's machinations, she hadn't been able to make it since the Albanian adventure. Or was it Romanian? Bulgarian, maybe. At least she'd managed to get a nice fur hat out of that "lets all save the world" effort.
"Marie-Ange?" Emma stopped short as she approached her office door, brought to a standstill by the young woman's miserable expression, contrasting with the sense of determination she was projecting.
"Can you please tell me that whatever is wrong with Doug is because of Ignatova and what had to be done and that it can be fixed because it has been more than six months." Marie-Ange had not done a very good job of waiting patiently, and an entire page of notebook paper was covered with doodles, some of which were most definitely not safe for most workplaces. "He just keeps saying that everything is confused in his head and I am worried something came back wrong!"
Emma didn't reply immediately, taking the time to open her office door and gesture Marie-Ange inside. She shut the door and, after they had seated themselves, leaned forward. "May I see?" she asked Marie-Ange. While Emma's ethics regarding reading thoughts was flexible to the point of non-existence most of the time, when it was in the form of therapy she had firm views about requesting permission. It didn't mean she wouldn't read whether she received the permission or not, but sometimes the way that the information was presented when the person consciously knew they were being read provided more information than the thoughts themselves.
Marie-Ange nodded, appreciating the courtesy. Her thoughts were a jumble of memories. The first few weeks of Doug's recovery she hadn't expected him to want intimacy. Even when she returned from Europe, it was not hard to understand that Doug's feelings and emotions were still partially locked away. But as little things came back, and then after Emma had unleashed them in a torrent, Marie-Ange had expected - and hoped - that their sex life would return.
It hadn't. Doug was no more interested in sex than he was some of his computer games. She had tried. Flirting, both innocently and more directly. "Forgetting" clothes. Casual touches that he didn't even notice - or occasionally still flinched away from. She'd graduated in the last few weeks to outright suggesting that they have sex and it had been met with avoidance, or outright "No, not really." And it had been months. Months of nothing at all except hugs and the occasional kiss, and Marie-Ange felt like she had been very patient. Right up until she and Doug moved in together and were sharing a bed every night and there was still nothing.
"Nothing seems to work and I do not know what to do anymore."
"Ah." Emma's exclamation was as delicate as the touch of her mind on Marie-Ange's, sorting quickly through the jumble of frustration, fear and worry that poured out at her. "If it helps," she offered, "it is almost certainly Ignatova's fault. Or, more precisly, mine." Emma reviewed the images that had tumbled out when she had shattered the walls in Doug's head, remembering some of the more intimate glimpses that had been presented. "His libido still exists," she said. "But I have not had time to make all the required reconnections, for which I offer my apologies. I do not know if that will resolve all of the problems, but I should be able to re-spark his interest. Give me - half an hour? I need to catch up with some paperwork, but I will clear my schedule after that."
Marie-Ange blinked, a little taken aback. "It is that easy to go put back whatever is not working right? I thought..." She had managed to convince herself it would be more taxing, had spent the morning steeling herself for some kind of ... examination of her and Doug's sex life. "Should I tell Doug? I.. he does not know I am talking to you about it because I was worried he would be upset." Which was not, she thought, possibly the best way to have gone about it.
Emma smile barely touched her lips before she schooled it away. "There is, I believe, an immediate physical issue with Doug. I did not have a chance to reconnect everything when I broke down his walls. It appears that one of those missing connections was a particularly important one. His desire exists, but he does not have the connections to feel it. What happens after I reconnect it may not be so easy to deal with. The damage I wrought is easily repaired, Marie-Ange. The damage Ignatova wrought may run far deeper. You need to speak to him. The choice to reconnect is his. Doug is very important to me, as you know. To have him complete will cause - fewer complications. But he needs to do it in his own time. Perhaps you should convince him the time is now." Emma's tone was suddenly very gentle. "Take whatever time you need, Marie-Ange. If you cannot persuade him today, you have my direct number. When Doug is ready, I will be here."
--
Doug looked up from his workstation as Marie-Ange strode purposefully into the server room. Determined wasn't quite the word for her body language, he thought as he cocked his head, but there was definitely a sense of...urgency. "Um, hello," he greeted her. "What's up?" Something was definitely up, judging from the way she looked intently at him. He tapped a key to send his workstation into hibernation mode, and turned all of his attention to his girlfriend. "What's going on?"
Before answering, Marie-Ange took a seat in one of the chairs Doug had 'acquired' from around the office. Despite her sense of urgency, she she felt tired, almost weary, after talking to Emma about the situation. It had gone on far too long and she'd put this off for much too much time, and now that she'd started talking about it to Emma, it seemed like bringing it up to Doug was even harder.
And yet, she couldn't very well make up an excuse and leave. Doug knew something was up. He already looked concerned and it wasn't like she could lie effectively to him without him knowing. She couldn't even come up with a decent lie-by-omission, he would know.
"I should have talked to you first about this, but I never knew what to say, and so I went to Emma..." Why was it that lately, whenever she and Doug had a serious conversation, all the words just came out of her mouth at once, like she had somehow switched conversational habits with Jubilee? "We have not.. you have not wanted to... Doug, it has been seven months since we had any sort of sex, and I did not know what else to do."
Doug ticked off the months on his fingers, then blinked. "Oh. I didn't realize it had been that long," he admitted sheepishly. Because that portion of his brain had been disconnected, he hadn't even missed it until Emma had opened the floodgates, and even then, things had been jumbled up due to the several months without it. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.
Marie-Ange was so tired of Doug's automatic "I'm sorry". She'd thought they'd gotten past that, gotten well past that years ago. She took a moment to compose herself, because now was not the time to argue with Doug about how apologies did not mean very much without action. "I asked Emma what to do, and she said she might be able to help." And the tone of her voice very obviously appended that statement with a "today. Now. right now."
Doug winced at the annoyed flinch in Marie-Ange's body language and belatedly remembered discussions he'd had in the past with her about "I'm sorry" and its relative value. That was the problem with all of his old memories stacking right on top of the several months he'd been without them. Sometimes he fell into old habits or forgot about something. The moments of cognitive dissonance were getting less and less frequent, but they still happened occasionally. The workstation was already in hibernation mode, so all he had to do was slide his keyboard tray in and stand up. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's go talk to her."
The aura of relief in Marie-Ange's body language was practically palatable. She'd been so worried that Doug wouldn't be willing to fix it, or would be upset that she'd not talked to him that she'd managed to tense herself up entirely in the short distance between Emma's office and Doug's server room. For a moment she sat, eyes closed, practically motionless in the chair and then collected herself and stood.
The walk back to Emma's office took moments, and Doug settled himself into one of the chairs in front of Emma's desk. He tapped his temple. "I think some things still need sorting in here," he said with a glance toward Marie-Ange as she followed him in. "It appears that it's been seven months since I've..." He made a vague gesture with his hand.
"It's probably been seven months since you've done a number of things," replied Emma. "But I suspect that this may be a particularly important one. For Marie-Ange, if no-one else." Her nod at the younger woman was purest courtesy. Personally, Emma couldn't imagine going seven days without having that particular need fulfilled, but Emma had to admit to herself that she couldn't imagine being in some sort of committed relationship either, so her understanding of Marie-Ange's plight was sympathetic but somewhat abstract.
"So, um, yeah," Doug stammered, fidgeting on the chair as he watched Emma and Marie-Ange. It was very difficult for him to sit still for some reason. Perhaps it was the sense of vulnerability. Despite Emma's having seen inside his brain before, and his trust of her, something was different. Perhaps it was Marie-Ange being there, and likely to be involved in the piecing together of his brain, including some of the darker corners of his psyche. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two women. "So, uh, what do we do?"
Emma smiled at Doug, almost gently. "This bit is the easy part," she said. "There are a few connections that need to be re-made. You can feel desire, but for now it has neither effect nor urgency. I just need to rearrange your mental furniture a little to fix that. All you have to do is let me in."
"Let me in," replied Emma. "No shields. No barriers. Let me see what you really are and I can make you more than you imagined."
The similarity to Emma's words from before brought Doug full circle, his memory flashing back to the moment before he and Emma had closed all those doors in his mind. And so, as before, he nodded and said "yes", his trust in Emma implicit. He leaned forward towards her slightly outstretched hands.
"Implicit trust," said Emma as she touched Doug's temples and stepped into his mind, "is necessary between the White Queen and her Knight." The mental scape around them looked like the inner sanctum of the Hellfire Club, to which Doug had so recently been admitted. Emma wore the ceremonial robes of the White Queen, and Doug faced her in the tailored white suit he had worn so well. "But more than trust alone. I need you whole," she whispered and her gloved hand caressed his cheek gently. "Desire has its uses."
Emma leaned forward, her lips brushing Doug's, gently at first but then with more purpose, a kiss both hungry and healing. The psychic surgery she performed was not subtle, but the movements of her lips were, a teasing, incendiary kiss. The glove disappeared from her psychic hand, so she could feel Doug's skin beneath her own. As the kiss deepened and she reconnected desire to thought to action to need, the feel of Doug's skin changed. Cool and smooth one moment, she made the last mental adjustment and suddenly Doug's skin warmed beneath her hand and then flushed with heat as his arms curved around her.
As each connection was made, Doug could practically sense the electricity of desire darting down his nerve endings. Each new connection doubled and redoubled the sensations with a rush of heat, and made it that much more difficult to stay still in the wake of the arousal it caused. Finally driven beyond the point of caring, his arms twined around Emma and his lips opened in a moan that passed into his Queen's mouth. He was extremely conscious of the lushness of her lips, the swell of her breasts against his chest, and the feel of her corset's laces interspersed with the soft skin of her back as his hands roamed up and down.
Emma savoured the kiss for one moment longer and then broke it, a gentle finger on Doug's lips stopping him. "My White Knight," she said. She grinned suddenly, wickedly, the length of her body wanton against his for a heartbeat. "Complete with sword." She stepped back from Doug, touching his hand. "I believe Marie-Ange is waiting for us."
Doug grunted, a noise of blended frustration, need, and playful grumpiness, but he stepped back as the mental construct faded around them, leaving them back in Emma's office. He squirmed slightly in his seat when he realized that the intense erection Emma had left him with in his mind had translated over to the physical world, and his nostrils flared slightly.
Marie-Ange's mouth opened, as though she wanted to say something, but only a soft "oh..." came out of her mouth. She knew those reactions. The squirming, that grunt, the way Doug set his shoulders and bit his lip. "Perhaps... ah..." She wasn't sure how to word it. On one hand, it was Emma and would she really say no, or be upset if Marie-Ange outright said "go home for the rest of the day and have a great deal of sex.". But on the other - there were things that one just did not say in the workplace. "Perhaps we should... go."
With the way Doug was feeling, and the realization of just how long it had been crashing down on his already rampant libido, the brownstone seemed entirely too far away for his tastes. The server room was much closer, and had a very handy lock. And it wasn't as though he and Marie-Ange hadn't made use of it before. He took his girlfriend's hand and practically dragged her out of the chair and towards the door. "If you'll excuse us, Emma," he said, trying desperately to maintain a veneer of politeness over his urgency.
"Run along, children," said Emma, her tone amused. "Try to minimise the damage." She waited until Doug and Marie-Ange were almost out of the door before she added quietly, "And don't forget to come back and see me when you decide to deal with the other issues."
Warning: Discussion of sexual topics. No actual sex. May or may not be safe for work.
It had been, Emma realised, far too long since she had been to the Snow Valley offices, but between Frost Enterprises, the Hellfire Club and investigating Shaw's machinations, she hadn't been able to make it since the Albanian adventure. Or was it Romanian? Bulgarian, maybe. At least she'd managed to get a nice fur hat out of that "lets all save the world" effort.
"Marie-Ange?" Emma stopped short as she approached her office door, brought to a standstill by the young woman's miserable expression, contrasting with the sense of determination she was projecting.
"Can you please tell me that whatever is wrong with Doug is because of Ignatova and what had to be done and that it can be fixed because it has been more than six months." Marie-Ange had not done a very good job of waiting patiently, and an entire page of notebook paper was covered with doodles, some of which were most definitely not safe for most workplaces. "He just keeps saying that everything is confused in his head and I am worried something came back wrong!"
Emma didn't reply immediately, taking the time to open her office door and gesture Marie-Ange inside. She shut the door and, after they had seated themselves, leaned forward. "May I see?" she asked Marie-Ange. While Emma's ethics regarding reading thoughts was flexible to the point of non-existence most of the time, when it was in the form of therapy she had firm views about requesting permission. It didn't mean she wouldn't read whether she received the permission or not, but sometimes the way that the information was presented when the person consciously knew they were being read provided more information than the thoughts themselves.
Marie-Ange nodded, appreciating the courtesy. Her thoughts were a jumble of memories. The first few weeks of Doug's recovery she hadn't expected him to want intimacy. Even when she returned from Europe, it was not hard to understand that Doug's feelings and emotions were still partially locked away. But as little things came back, and then after Emma had unleashed them in a torrent, Marie-Ange had expected - and hoped - that their sex life would return.
It hadn't. Doug was no more interested in sex than he was some of his computer games. She had tried. Flirting, both innocently and more directly. "Forgetting" clothes. Casual touches that he didn't even notice - or occasionally still flinched away from. She'd graduated in the last few weeks to outright suggesting that they have sex and it had been met with avoidance, or outright "No, not really." And it had been months. Months of nothing at all except hugs and the occasional kiss, and Marie-Ange felt like she had been very patient. Right up until she and Doug moved in together and were sharing a bed every night and there was still nothing.
"Nothing seems to work and I do not know what to do anymore."
"Ah." Emma's exclamation was as delicate as the touch of her mind on Marie-Ange's, sorting quickly through the jumble of frustration, fear and worry that poured out at her. "If it helps," she offered, "it is almost certainly Ignatova's fault. Or, more precisly, mine." Emma reviewed the images that had tumbled out when she had shattered the walls in Doug's head, remembering some of the more intimate glimpses that had been presented. "His libido still exists," she said. "But I have not had time to make all the required reconnections, for which I offer my apologies. I do not know if that will resolve all of the problems, but I should be able to re-spark his interest. Give me - half an hour? I need to catch up with some paperwork, but I will clear my schedule after that."
Marie-Ange blinked, a little taken aback. "It is that easy to go put back whatever is not working right? I thought..." She had managed to convince herself it would be more taxing, had spent the morning steeling herself for some kind of ... examination of her and Doug's sex life. "Should I tell Doug? I.. he does not know I am talking to you about it because I was worried he would be upset." Which was not, she thought, possibly the best way to have gone about it.
Emma smile barely touched her lips before she schooled it away. "There is, I believe, an immediate physical issue with Doug. I did not have a chance to reconnect everything when I broke down his walls. It appears that one of those missing connections was a particularly important one. His desire exists, but he does not have the connections to feel it. What happens after I reconnect it may not be so easy to deal with. The damage I wrought is easily repaired, Marie-Ange. The damage Ignatova wrought may run far deeper. You need to speak to him. The choice to reconnect is his. Doug is very important to me, as you know. To have him complete will cause - fewer complications. But he needs to do it in his own time. Perhaps you should convince him the time is now." Emma's tone was suddenly very gentle. "Take whatever time you need, Marie-Ange. If you cannot persuade him today, you have my direct number. When Doug is ready, I will be here."
--
Doug looked up from his workstation as Marie-Ange strode purposefully into the server room. Determined wasn't quite the word for her body language, he thought as he cocked his head, but there was definitely a sense of...urgency. "Um, hello," he greeted her. "What's up?" Something was definitely up, judging from the way she looked intently at him. He tapped a key to send his workstation into hibernation mode, and turned all of his attention to his girlfriend. "What's going on?"
Before answering, Marie-Ange took a seat in one of the chairs Doug had 'acquired' from around the office. Despite her sense of urgency, she she felt tired, almost weary, after talking to Emma about the situation. It had gone on far too long and she'd put this off for much too much time, and now that she'd started talking about it to Emma, it seemed like bringing it up to Doug was even harder.
And yet, she couldn't very well make up an excuse and leave. Doug knew something was up. He already looked concerned and it wasn't like she could lie effectively to him without him knowing. She couldn't even come up with a decent lie-by-omission, he would know.
"I should have talked to you first about this, but I never knew what to say, and so I went to Emma..." Why was it that lately, whenever she and Doug had a serious conversation, all the words just came out of her mouth at once, like she had somehow switched conversational habits with Jubilee? "We have not.. you have not wanted to... Doug, it has been seven months since we had any sort of sex, and I did not know what else to do."
Doug ticked off the months on his fingers, then blinked. "Oh. I didn't realize it had been that long," he admitted sheepishly. Because that portion of his brain had been disconnected, he hadn't even missed it until Emma had opened the floodgates, and even then, things had been jumbled up due to the several months without it. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.
Marie-Ange was so tired of Doug's automatic "I'm sorry". She'd thought they'd gotten past that, gotten well past that years ago. She took a moment to compose herself, because now was not the time to argue with Doug about how apologies did not mean very much without action. "I asked Emma what to do, and she said she might be able to help." And the tone of her voice very obviously appended that statement with a "today. Now. right now."
Doug winced at the annoyed flinch in Marie-Ange's body language and belatedly remembered discussions he'd had in the past with her about "I'm sorry" and its relative value. That was the problem with all of his old memories stacking right on top of the several months he'd been without them. Sometimes he fell into old habits or forgot about something. The moments of cognitive dissonance were getting less and less frequent, but they still happened occasionally. The workstation was already in hibernation mode, so all he had to do was slide his keyboard tray in and stand up. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's go talk to her."
The aura of relief in Marie-Ange's body language was practically palatable. She'd been so worried that Doug wouldn't be willing to fix it, or would be upset that she'd not talked to him that she'd managed to tense herself up entirely in the short distance between Emma's office and Doug's server room. For a moment she sat, eyes closed, practically motionless in the chair and then collected herself and stood.
The walk back to Emma's office took moments, and Doug settled himself into one of the chairs in front of Emma's desk. He tapped his temple. "I think some things still need sorting in here," he said with a glance toward Marie-Ange as she followed him in. "It appears that it's been seven months since I've..." He made a vague gesture with his hand.
"It's probably been seven months since you've done a number of things," replied Emma. "But I suspect that this may be a particularly important one. For Marie-Ange, if no-one else." Her nod at the younger woman was purest courtesy. Personally, Emma couldn't imagine going seven days without having that particular need fulfilled, but Emma had to admit to herself that she couldn't imagine being in some sort of committed relationship either, so her understanding of Marie-Ange's plight was sympathetic but somewhat abstract.
"So, um, yeah," Doug stammered, fidgeting on the chair as he watched Emma and Marie-Ange. It was very difficult for him to sit still for some reason. Perhaps it was the sense of vulnerability. Despite Emma's having seen inside his brain before, and his trust of her, something was different. Perhaps it was Marie-Ange being there, and likely to be involved in the piecing together of his brain, including some of the darker corners of his psyche. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two women. "So, uh, what do we do?"
Emma smiled at Doug, almost gently. "This bit is the easy part," she said. "There are a few connections that need to be re-made. You can feel desire, but for now it has neither effect nor urgency. I just need to rearrange your mental furniture a little to fix that. All you have to do is let me in."
"Let me in," replied Emma. "No shields. No barriers. Let me see what you really are and I can make you more than you imagined."
The similarity to Emma's words from before brought Doug full circle, his memory flashing back to the moment before he and Emma had closed all those doors in his mind. And so, as before, he nodded and said "yes", his trust in Emma implicit. He leaned forward towards her slightly outstretched hands.
"Implicit trust," said Emma as she touched Doug's temples and stepped into his mind, "is necessary between the White Queen and her Knight." The mental scape around them looked like the inner sanctum of the Hellfire Club, to which Doug had so recently been admitted. Emma wore the ceremonial robes of the White Queen, and Doug faced her in the tailored white suit he had worn so well. "But more than trust alone. I need you whole," she whispered and her gloved hand caressed his cheek gently. "Desire has its uses."
Emma leaned forward, her lips brushing Doug's, gently at first but then with more purpose, a kiss both hungry and healing. The psychic surgery she performed was not subtle, but the movements of her lips were, a teasing, incendiary kiss. The glove disappeared from her psychic hand, so she could feel Doug's skin beneath her own. As the kiss deepened and she reconnected desire to thought to action to need, the feel of Doug's skin changed. Cool and smooth one moment, she made the last mental adjustment and suddenly Doug's skin warmed beneath her hand and then flushed with heat as his arms curved around her.
As each connection was made, Doug could practically sense the electricity of desire darting down his nerve endings. Each new connection doubled and redoubled the sensations with a rush of heat, and made it that much more difficult to stay still in the wake of the arousal it caused. Finally driven beyond the point of caring, his arms twined around Emma and his lips opened in a moan that passed into his Queen's mouth. He was extremely conscious of the lushness of her lips, the swell of her breasts against his chest, and the feel of her corset's laces interspersed with the soft skin of her back as his hands roamed up and down.
Emma savoured the kiss for one moment longer and then broke it, a gentle finger on Doug's lips stopping him. "My White Knight," she said. She grinned suddenly, wickedly, the length of her body wanton against his for a heartbeat. "Complete with sword." She stepped back from Doug, touching his hand. "I believe Marie-Ange is waiting for us."
Doug grunted, a noise of blended frustration, need, and playful grumpiness, but he stepped back as the mental construct faded around them, leaving them back in Emma's office. He squirmed slightly in his seat when he realized that the intense erection Emma had left him with in his mind had translated over to the physical world, and his nostrils flared slightly.
Marie-Ange's mouth opened, as though she wanted to say something, but only a soft "oh..." came out of her mouth. She knew those reactions. The squirming, that grunt, the way Doug set his shoulders and bit his lip. "Perhaps... ah..." She wasn't sure how to word it. On one hand, it was Emma and would she really say no, or be upset if Marie-Ange outright said "go home for the rest of the day and have a great deal of sex.". But on the other - there were things that one just did not say in the workplace. "Perhaps we should... go."
With the way Doug was feeling, and the realization of just how long it had been crashing down on his already rampant libido, the brownstone seemed entirely too far away for his tastes. The server room was much closer, and had a very handy lock. And it wasn't as though he and Marie-Ange hadn't made use of it before. He took his girlfriend's hand and practically dragged her out of the chair and towards the door. "If you'll excuse us, Emma," he said, trying desperately to maintain a veneer of politeness over his urgency.
"Run along, children," said Emma, her tone amused. "Try to minimise the damage." She waited until Doug and Marie-Ange were almost out of the door before she added quietly, "And don't forget to come back and see me when you decide to deal with the other issues."
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