![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
x-tarot.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsWhen you're a pair of mutant super-spies who live in a building with other mutant super-spies, and your parents want to visit, cleaning house is a little more annoying and troublesome.
Doug and Marie-Ange attempt to relax after tidying the apartment and totally fail. Marie-Ange being spookily precognitive about 'family issues' does not help matters any either. It's not her fault she can't lie to Doug.
~Pock. Thump. Pock pock, tha-thump. Pock, thump pock pock, thump. Pock, tha-thump thump, pock.~ The staccato and complex rhythm circulated through Doug and Marie-Ange's apartment as an approximately fist-sized rubber ball flashed in the lamplight. Doug lay back on their couch with his head on a throw pillow, and bounced the ball rapidly off a series of locations on the ceiling, walls, and floor. There was a pattern to the placement and sound, though practically incomprehensible to anyone but Doug himself. Every so often, he would experiment with a new placement or sound and incorporate it into the series. ~Pank~ was the rattle of their coffee table's glass top, then back to the ceiling. The next sound was the shifting of CD cases in a stand as it vibrated from an (intentional) near-miss against the floor.
"Are you going to put the CD's back if they all fall down from shaking themselves around?" Marie-Ange asked. She was curled up in the 'big ugly chair' with a book, a blanket and a mug of hot tea, trying to relax after they had torn through the apartment trying to remove any evidence of the parts of their lives that Doug's family should certainly not know about.
The apartment looked so -normal- now. The small safe where Doug kept his gun was in the back of their closet behind their formal clothes, the stranger paperwork that sometimes littered their kitchen table had been banished to the a box under the bed, the tarot cards that always littered every other flat surface has all been moved to their bedroom, and then they had cleaned.
Not that the apartment was ever dirty, but it was often cluttered with the pieces of two very busy lives, and now it was tidy and neat and it was sort of making Marie-Ange twitchy.
Doug's twitchiness, conversely, came from quashing a desire to go around the apartment again and find some miniscule thing to put away or rearrange compulsively. He was something of a mass of nervous energy at the moment, which he was trying to channel with the bouncing ball so that he didn't run around the apartment yelling and tearing his hair out. "Yes, but they won't," he replied a bit shortly. The placement of the ball was extremely precise, and calculated not to knock anything over even if it was flying all around the apartment in a seemingly reckless way.
Marie-Ange dog-eared a page in the book to mark her place and unfolded herself from the blanket and chair, coming over to sit on the other end of the couch from Doug. "When does their flight get in? Are we to meet them at the airport?" she asked. Perhaps having him focus on minutia would help him not fly all to pieces. Not that she was at all happy about the visit, but what could they do?
"This afternoon. I told them we could meet them at the airport if they like. They're getting a rental car and staying in a hotel near here." Thank god for that, he thought. At least, given that all four of them were coming to visit, staying with Doug in their apartment was pretty much a non-starter. He suspected they'd be spending a fair amount of time at the apartment, but at least they wouldn't be around for Jubilee's sleep-burgling or any of the other odd nocturnal happenings around the brownstone.
"At least they can go and be tourists while we are at work?" Marie-Ange offered hopefully. New York City was a popular tourist destination, the weather was nice, hopefully they would go do tourist things. "And then you can show them around the real part of the city for dinner, yes, that seems like a normal thing to do?" What else did you do when your family visited, she wondered.
"I'm sure they're going to want to 'hang out' with me or us at least some of the time," Doug groused. "I mean, I got the impression when I talked to them that they were maybe feeling a little guilty about how the last time they came out here was our graduation, and that I'd been back to visit them several times between then and now." He caught the ball and ran a hand through his hair. "Just...just tell me this doesn't all blow up in my face somehow," he asked raggedly.
On habit, Marie-Ange reached for a deck of cards. That was why they littered the apartment. And there were none, and she frowned at the empty card table. "I.. have had family conflict come up in readings all this and last week?" She said sheepishly. "But that could not be anything serious. I also did a reading for Nico and her family issues are very serious."
Doug was silent, the only sign of his mood the whitening of his knuckles as he clenched them around the rubber ball. "Angie, love, you really need to learn to lie to me at times like this," he told her in a suspiciously neutral tone, as if he were struggling not to go straight into a panic attack.
Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow, as if to say - and clearly meaning "At what time, ever, have I been able to lie to you without you knowing about it?"
Doug and Marie-Ange attempt to relax after tidying the apartment and totally fail. Marie-Ange being spookily precognitive about 'family issues' does not help matters any either. It's not her fault she can't lie to Doug.
~Pock. Thump. Pock pock, tha-thump. Pock, thump pock pock, thump. Pock, tha-thump thump, pock.~ The staccato and complex rhythm circulated through Doug and Marie-Ange's apartment as an approximately fist-sized rubber ball flashed in the lamplight. Doug lay back on their couch with his head on a throw pillow, and bounced the ball rapidly off a series of locations on the ceiling, walls, and floor. There was a pattern to the placement and sound, though practically incomprehensible to anyone but Doug himself. Every so often, he would experiment with a new placement or sound and incorporate it into the series. ~Pank~ was the rattle of their coffee table's glass top, then back to the ceiling. The next sound was the shifting of CD cases in a stand as it vibrated from an (intentional) near-miss against the floor.
"Are you going to put the CD's back if they all fall down from shaking themselves around?" Marie-Ange asked. She was curled up in the 'big ugly chair' with a book, a blanket and a mug of hot tea, trying to relax after they had torn through the apartment trying to remove any evidence of the parts of their lives that Doug's family should certainly not know about.
The apartment looked so -normal- now. The small safe where Doug kept his gun was in the back of their closet behind their formal clothes, the stranger paperwork that sometimes littered their kitchen table had been banished to the a box under the bed, the tarot cards that always littered every other flat surface has all been moved to their bedroom, and then they had cleaned.
Not that the apartment was ever dirty, but it was often cluttered with the pieces of two very busy lives, and now it was tidy and neat and it was sort of making Marie-Ange twitchy.
Doug's twitchiness, conversely, came from quashing a desire to go around the apartment again and find some miniscule thing to put away or rearrange compulsively. He was something of a mass of nervous energy at the moment, which he was trying to channel with the bouncing ball so that he didn't run around the apartment yelling and tearing his hair out. "Yes, but they won't," he replied a bit shortly. The placement of the ball was extremely precise, and calculated not to knock anything over even if it was flying all around the apartment in a seemingly reckless way.
Marie-Ange dog-eared a page in the book to mark her place and unfolded herself from the blanket and chair, coming over to sit on the other end of the couch from Doug. "When does their flight get in? Are we to meet them at the airport?" she asked. Perhaps having him focus on minutia would help him not fly all to pieces. Not that she was at all happy about the visit, but what could they do?
"This afternoon. I told them we could meet them at the airport if they like. They're getting a rental car and staying in a hotel near here." Thank god for that, he thought. At least, given that all four of them were coming to visit, staying with Doug in their apartment was pretty much a non-starter. He suspected they'd be spending a fair amount of time at the apartment, but at least they wouldn't be around for Jubilee's sleep-burgling or any of the other odd nocturnal happenings around the brownstone.
"At least they can go and be tourists while we are at work?" Marie-Ange offered hopefully. New York City was a popular tourist destination, the weather was nice, hopefully they would go do tourist things. "And then you can show them around the real part of the city for dinner, yes, that seems like a normal thing to do?" What else did you do when your family visited, she wondered.
"I'm sure they're going to want to 'hang out' with me or us at least some of the time," Doug groused. "I mean, I got the impression when I talked to them that they were maybe feeling a little guilty about how the last time they came out here was our graduation, and that I'd been back to visit them several times between then and now." He caught the ball and ran a hand through his hair. "Just...just tell me this doesn't all blow up in my face somehow," he asked raggedly.
On habit, Marie-Ange reached for a deck of cards. That was why they littered the apartment. And there were none, and she frowned at the empty card table. "I.. have had family conflict come up in readings all this and last week?" She said sheepishly. "But that could not be anything serious. I also did a reading for Nico and her family issues are very serious."
Doug was silent, the only sign of his mood the whitening of his knuckles as he clenched them around the rubber ball. "Angie, love, you really need to learn to lie to me at times like this," he told her in a suspiciously neutral tone, as if he were struggling not to go straight into a panic attack.
Marie-Ange raised an eyebrow, as if to say - and clearly meaning "At what time, ever, have I been able to lie to you without you knowing about it?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}