Wanda, Jake, Marie-Ange and Doug

[x-scarletwitch.livejournal.com]

The four enjoy a relaxing dinner - relaxing until the conversation turns to Wanda and Jake.



Wanda stared at the menu. "I'm an open minded person," came the slightly muffled voice, "but I am not even sure half of this is edible." She peered accusingly over top of the menu at Doug. "Just because I managed to avoid any sort of sushi during my limited time in Asia, on several trips, does not mean my horizons need to be opened further."

She was mostly kidding. After all, it was a nice evening out with Marie-Ange, Doug and Jake - it was enjoyable to just go out to a nice place to eat and relax. Even if Doug was trying to get her to eat bizarre things with tentacles.

"Sure, you'll teach me all about blowjobs, but you draw the line at putting stuff that's still food into your mouth?" Doug asked with a smirk, setting the menu aside without even glancing at it.

"Cocks don't wriggle like tentacles," Jake supplied helpfully, then paused to reconsider. "Well. They're not supposed to." He glanced at Wanda. "You're really telling me you've never had sushi before? That's criminal. Especially when there are so many more terrifying foods in Asia."

"No, make that two bottles." Marie-Ange called over her shoulder to the fleeing waiter. "I would worry about us being kicked out, but I have been here with Mark, and he is much worse." She had been torn between faux-embarrassment and joining in on the teasing, and had decided on a healthy middle ground of 'drink more'. It had always worked before. "Also I do not think the tentacles, er.. " It was amazing how much you could express by blowing a straw wrapper across the table.

Somehow, it completely missed Wanda's cleavage and landed right in Jake's drink. "And now we have added interpretive straw puppet theater to the mix," she observed. "This night is already in the hand basket and we're being prepped for a long ride down."

She looked over at Doug as she leaned against Jake's shoulder, not being dislodged by his attempts to get the straw out of his drink. "I should just let you order, shouldn't I?"

Doug smirked. "Given how raucous the Spongebob was, was there really any doubt of any of our outings going straight to the hot place? I mean, really." Not that Wanda looked all that perturbed. For that matter, he wasn't sure he'd ever -seen- her perturbed. He shuddered to think how messed up things would have to get before she would be.

Jake finally succeeded in fishing the straw wrapper from his water, a process that took far longer than it should have thanks to Wanda's playful interference. "Ooh, does this mean I get to pretend to be the mature, grown up one of our foursome?" He balled up the soggy wrapper and flicked it back towards Marie-Ange's cleavage, but a nudge from Wanda sent it wide.

Marie-Ange glanced at the sodden wrapper hanging limply from the edge of the table and raised an eyebrow. "I am taking note of your use of the word pretend. Maybe we should just order many of sushi rolls and share. Because that avoids the wriggly food, lets Doug translate the menu to his heart's content and Wanda can not look at the raw fish while she eats it."

Wanda waved a hand to grab the waiter's attention. "I knew you were hired for more than just your good looks," she said with a wink. She leaned back as she pointed at Doug before reaching over to steal one of Jake's appetizers. She wasn't really sure what he had gotten beyond that it was deep fried - and where there was a deep fryer, there usually was goodness.

It was something that America had taught her.

"They've met Mark, they don't expect any of us to be adults," Doug told Jake with a snort, wielding a pair of chopsticks and dunking a piece of sushi in a bowl that he had mixed an inordinate amount of wasabi in with his soy sauce. He made a happy sound as the wasabi went to work cauterizing his taste buds. At least, that's what the others would claim.

Jake looked forlornly at his disappearing appetizer, pouting at Wanda. "You could at least share," he complained, although there was a good-natured undercurrent to his voice.

"I could," she returned before sighing playfully. She broke the piece in her hand in half, eating one part while holding the other part up to Jake. "Fingers!" she warned with a laugh as she fed it to him. "It is not as spicy as I would have thought, more of a slow burn."

"Yes, no biting, children, or we shall turn this table around and drive home." Marie-Ange said, giggling a little. She had stolen a piece of shrimp off Doug's plate and was peeling the tempura off of it. "Jake, did no one tell you that stolen food tastes better. That is why bags of french fries never make it all the way to the office." No matter who was bringing the food. Jubilee, Mark, Doug, Marie-Ange herself. Everyone stole french fries.

"Which is why I stole it right back," he pointed out with a grin, wiping a smear of sauce from his lower lip with a thumb and then licking the digit clean. He gave Wanda a playfully pointed look. "Is this why you steal my hot chocolate every morning?"

She poked him gently between the eyes. "Well, yes, I suppose. Also, you stole the giant bag of marshmallows that Jubilee gifted me for ... some strange reason. So if I want hot chocolate with marshmallows, I have to go and steal your hot chocolate. See, perfectly logically, yes?" Wanda turned towards Doug to agree with her.

Doug's 'perfectly logical' brain was headed in a different direction given that Jake and Wanda apparently spent quite a few mornings together. Plus given the way that their body language was around each other, and the general way they tended to ignore personal space in a way that he and Angie did... "Are you two sleeping together?" he blurted out suddenly.

Jake froze, blinking, his mouth full of sushi. And then burst out laughing, only barely managing to keep himself from spraying his dinner companions with rice and seaweed. If it weren't for his powers, he would have been quite literally choking on his food; as it was, it took some very clever manipulations to keep his airway clear until he could swallow.

"Douglas!" Wanda said, equally ... well, a little shocked, amused and a teeny bit 'hrm'. Actually, she was surprised that someone hadn't asked them before but she hadn't expected Doug to be the one to do it. She wondered what they must look like to him and shook her head. And planted an elbow in Jake's ribs. "No, we've never actually slept together - though he does not have to laugh so hard."

"Ow!" Jake yelped, still laughing. "What? It's funny. I mean--not the thought of us sleeping together, just the...the way..." He trailed off at Wanda's nonplussed look. "...I should shut up, shouldn't I?"

"Are you sure?" Marie-Ange asked, looking at Wanda and Jake. And then paused. "Are you sober?" She asked Doug. "Not that I do not agree with his assessment but ..." It had been abrupt and a little surprising for him to ask. "Maybe you slept together and forgot. It could have happened. You should ask yourselves if you know much too much about what the other person looks like naked and if you have good reason to know those things."

Watching Wanda and Jake stumble all over themselves was pretty funny, Doug had to admit. He wasn't sure where the question had come from, honestly. Just one of those insane leaps of quasi-logic that skipped about five steps that his brain did every so often. He shrugged at the rest of the table's occupants. "Just seemed like it from the way you two act around each other."

Wanda's reply of "But I act like this with all my friends" died before it even made it past her brain. She knew she didn't act like this with anyone besides Jake. Not even with former boyfriends or lovers. There was playful and then there was whatever she had with Jake. She looked at him and shrugged one shoulder.

"I do not think I could really explain it. He's just ... Jake. And that is how I act with him. We became roommates in our first conversation, I suppose that set some precedence." He'd been there, too, when the nightmares had started as Chthon had started to bleed over. Confused and uncertain of what to do but he'd been there.

Jake chased a piece of stray rice around his plate with his chopsticks, not sure of what to say. He wanted to make a joke, to deflect attention away from the issue, but that didn't seem fair. Not after the last few months. Not after the last few years. "It's...Wanda," he echoed finally, shrugging, not looking up. "She's the reason I stuck around."

And it was true, he realized. He would have been gone within weeks, if not days, had she not been there. He continued to look at his plate, hoping that someone would change the subject or lighten the mood.

"So... I do not understand, you are not sleeping together... why?" Marie-Ange had stopped in the middle of removing the end of a piece of shrimp, and held the piece in her chopsticks. She caught a raised eyebrow from Wanda and shrugged. "If Doug is going to ask, then I am just going to not be embarrassed about it anymore. Besides, I think after the bathroom incident..." She still wasn't sure what people had heard.

"I think someone slipped something in the drink," Wanda said dryly, though she didn't seem annoyed. Just perplexed. "And we shall not talk about any bathroom incidents, it tends to be safer that way." She took a sip of her drink and shook her head. "We ... hadn't thought about it?"

Well, that was a lie. Jake was pretty and she'd seen him enough times in states of near to naked to appreciate that side of him.

And now he was thinking about it. "I don't sleep with everybody," Jake muttered somewhat peevishly, trying to fight back the mental image of a shower warm and dripping wet Wanda pushing him up against the wall in Vermont wearing nothing but a hand towel. "Besides," he said, trying for humor, "she hasn't tried to shoot me yet."

Doug reached toward the small of his back theatrically. "Well, if that's your idea of foreplay and that's all that's stopping you..." he said teasingly.

The panicked look on Jake's face was comical. "No! I mean--Don't--" He spluttered to a halt, eyes narrowing. "I think I hate you," he groused, stealing the last piece of sushi and popping it into his mouth. "Yep," he said around the sushi, "totally hate you."

Marie-Ange's raised eyebrow and glance behind Doug's back was enough to confirm that no, Doug did not actually have his gun on him. Which was a bit of a relief. It was odd enough to have the thing in a safe in the apartment. "You do not hate us. You love us. It is just a kind of love where you steal the food from our kitchen while we are not able to guard it."

"Because you were occupied in the bathroom," Jake pointed out with a smirk, happy to deflect the conversation away from he and Wanda.

"You stole their food while they were in the bathroom?" Wanda asked, clinking her glass against Jake's. "Now that is talent."

"While we were having -sex- in the bathroom," Doug corrected with an answering smirk. There was really no point in staying embarrassed about it, as the more they seemed embarrassed, the more their coworkers would harass them.

"I thought Wanda just asked not to talk about that. She is old and not having sex anymore, so we should not taunt her." Marie-Ange teased. She smiled across the table at Wanda with an all too fake innocent look on her face. "You did ask. And you just said you were not having sex with Jake. And Doug will protect me if you try to kill me in my sleep. Not that I sleep."

"Sleep, who said anything about going after you when you sleep?" The slow smile was positively evil. "I mean, considering the topic, there are other ways I could extract my revenge for you maligning my love life. I may not be having sex with Jake but that does not mean I am not having sex." She turned back to the poor guy. "This conversation is going to cost me an entire cake, isn't it?"

"At least one," Jake replied, trying his best to look more affronted than amused--which wasn't nearly as difficult as it should have been, he noted uneasily. "After all, I got an entire fridge's worth of food when they had sex."

Wanda pointed her chopstick - which really had been used more for stabbing than picking up - at Doug and Marie-Ange. "You two owe me a cake, then."